famous 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

DAVIS 


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iAJUUAMjU^ 


FAMOUS  AUTHORS -MEN 


Reproduced, by  permission,  from  "  A  Pair  of  Patient  Lovers."— Copyright,  1901,  by 
Harper  &  Brothers. 


WILLIAM    DEAN    HOWELLS. 


By 

E.  F.  Harkins 


Author  of  "Famous  Authors  (Women),  "  "The 
Schemers, ' '  etc. 


L-C  PAGE- fcJ-COMPANY 
BOSTON*  PUBLISHERS 


LIBRARY 

SQflVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


Copyright, 
BY  L.  C.  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
(INCORPORATED) 

All  rights  reserved 


Fourth  Impression,  February,  1906 


COLONIAL  PRESS 

Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  C.  H.  Simonds  <&•  Co. 
Boston,  U.S.A. 


PKEFACE 


THE  aim  of  this  look  is  to  present  to 
the  reading  public  sketches  of  some  of 
its  American  literary  heroes.  There 
are  heroes  young  and  old  ;  but  in  literature, 
especially,  age  has  little  to  do  with  favorites. 
At  the  same  time,  it  will  be  noted  that  the 
subjects  of  these  sketches  occupy  places  in  or 
near  the  centre  of  the  literary  stage.  The 
lately  dead,  like  Maurice  Thompson;  the  hero 
of  the  last  generation,  like  Edward  Everett 
Hale;  the  young  man  who  has  made  his  first 
successful  flight  —  these  do  not  come  within 
the  scope  of  the  present  work.  So,  if  some 
reader  miss  his  favorite,  let  him  understand 
that  at  least  there  was  no  malice  in  the 
exclusion. 

A  part  of  the  aim  has  been  to  present  the 


PREFACE 


social  or  personal  as  well  as  the  professional 
side  of  the  authors.  Many  of  the  anecdotes 
commonly  told  of  well-known  novelists  are 
apocryphal  or  imaginary.  Care,  therefore, 
has  been  taken  to  separate  the  wheat  from  the 
chaff.  Wherever  it  was  possible,  preference 
has  been  given  the  statements  of  the  authors 
themselves. 

The  sketches  are  arranged  chronologically, 
that  is,  in  the  order  of  the  authors'  first 
publications.  No  other  arrangement,  indeed, 
would  seem  fair  among  so  gifted  and  popular 
a  company,  writing  for  a  public  that  dis 
criminates  while  it  encourages  and  enjoys. 


CONTENTS 


Page 

Preface  5 

William  Dean  Ho  wells  11 

Bret  Harte  27 

Mark  Twain  43 

"  Lew  "  Wallace  59 

George  W.  Cable  75 

Henry  James  91 

Francis  Richard  Stockton  107 

Joel  Chandler  Harris  123 

S.  Weir  Mitchell  139 

Robert  Grant  155 

F.  Marion  Crawford  169 

James  Lane  Allen  185 

Thomas  Nelson  Page  201 

Richard  Harding  Davis  215 

John  Kendrick  Bangs  231 

Hamlin  Garland  247 

Paul  Leicester  Ford  263 

Robert  Neilson  Stephens  279 

Charles  D.  G.  Roberts  299 

Winston  Churchill  317 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


Page 

William  Dean  Howells  Frontispiece 

Bret  Harte  27 

George  W.  Cable  75 

Francis  Eichard  Stockton  107 

S.  Weir  Mitchell  139 

Kobert  Grant  155 

F.  Marion  Crawford  169 

James  Lane  Allen  185 

Thomas  Nelson  Page  201 

Eichard  Harding  Davis  215 

John  Kendrick  Bangs  231 

Hamlin  Garland  247 

Eobert  Neilson  Stephens  279 

Charles  G.  D.  Eoberts  299 

Winston  Churchill  317 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 


•jm  /rE.  HOWELLS  has  reached  that 
/  m/f  point  of  life  and  success  where 
-^-  *  **~  he  can  afford  to  sit  down  and 
look  back.  But  he  is  not  that  sort  of  man. 
He  will  probably  continue  to  work  and  to 
look  forward  until,  in  the  words  of  Hamlet, 
he  shuffles  off  this  mortal  coil. 

William  Dean  Howells  was  born  in  Mar 
tin's  Ferry,  Belmont  County,  Ohio,  March 
1,  1837.  He  has  therefore  reached  the 
ripe  age  of  sixty-four.  When  he  was  three 
years  old  his  father  moved  from  Martin's 
Ferry  to  Hamilton  and  bought  The,  Intelli 
gencer,  a  weekly  paper.  Nine  years  after 
ward  he  sold  The  Intelligencer  and  moved 
to  Dayton,  becoming  proprietor  of  the 
Dayton  Transcript.  This  paper  had  been  a 

11 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

semi-weekly,  but  Mr.  Howells  changed  it  to 
a  daily ;  and  his  son  William  went  to  work 
for  him.  It  was  William's  business  to 
rise  at  four  in  the  morning  and  sell  the 
paper  about  town.  But  the  Transcript 
proved  a  failure,  so  the  Howells  family  left 
Dayton  and  moved  into  the  country  on  the 
banks  of  the  Miami,  where  for  a  year  a 
log-cabin  was  their  home. 

Mr.  Howells  tells  a  characteristic  story 
of  those  struggling  days,  "  When  I  was  a 
boy,"  he  said  some  years  ago,  "  I  worked 
on  my  father's  paper.  Among  other  things, 
I  set  type.  Those  were  days  of  great 
struggle  for  all  of  us.  The  paper  was  not 
profitable,  and  ours  was  a  large  family.  My 
tastes  and  ambitions  were  all  literary,  and 
I  wanted  to  write  a  story.  Instead  of 
writing  it  and  then  setting  it  up  in  type,  I 
composed  it  at  the  case  and  put  it  in  type 
as  I  invented  it.  We  printed  a  chapter  of 
12 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HO  WELLS 

it  weekly  in  the  paper,  and  so  it  was  pub 
lished  as  fast  as  I  got  it  up.  I  tried  to  get 
three  or  four  chapters  ready  in  advance, 
but  I  could  not  do  it.  All  I  could  possibly 
accomplish  was  to  have  one  installment 
ready  every  time  the  paper  went  to  press. 
This  went  on  for  a  long  while,  and  that 
story  became  a  burden  to  me.  It  stretched 
out  longer  and  longer,  but  I  could  see  no 
way  to  end  it.  Every  week  I  resolved  that 
that  story  should  be  finished  in  the  next 
week's  paper ;  every  week  it  refused  to  be 
finished.  Finally  I  became  positively  panic 
stricken,  and  ended  it  somehow  or  other. 
The  experience  discouraged  me  to  some 
extent.  I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  could 
not  invent." 

In  1851,  when  William  was  fourteen,  the 
family  moved  from  the  country  to  Colum 
bus,  where  his  father  got  employment  as  a 
clerk  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  and 

13 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

also  as  a  compositor  on  the  Ohio  State 
Journal.  William  went  to  work  as  a  re 
porter  on  the  Journal.  Five  years  later  he 
became  the  Columbus  correspondent  of  the 
Cincinnati  Gazette.  In  1859  he  took  the 
position  of  news  editor  of  the  Ohio  State 
Journal.  Later  that  same  year  Howells 
senior,  from  whom  the  son  evidently  in 
herited  his  industry  and  ambition,  bought 
the  Ashtabula  Sentinel  and  transferred  the 
property  to  Jefferson,  whither  the  family 
moved.  William  took  the  position  of  sub 
editor  of  the  Sentinel. 

From  time  to  time  poems  by  young 
Howells  had  appeared  in  the  Ohio  news 
papers.  Some  of  his  verses,  too,  had  even 
been  published  by  The  Atlantic  Monthly. 
In  1860,  in  collaboration  with  John  J. 
Piatt,  he  published  his  first  volume  of  verse 
—  "Poems  by  Two  Friends."  In  1860, 
also,  Howells's  "  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln  " 
14 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 

was  published.  With  the  earnings  of  this 
immediately  popular  work  our  author  jour 
neyed  to  the  East  by  way  of  Canada.  In 
Boston  he  first  met  James  Russell  Lowell, 
who  was  then  editor  of  TJie  Atlantic  Monthly. 
Afterward  he  visited  the  publishers,  Messrs. 
Ticknor  and  Fields,  primarily  in  connection 
with  one  of  his  poems  which  The  Atlantic 
then  had  in  hand,  "The  Pilot's  Story." 
Mr.  Fields  introduced  Howells  to  Mr.  Tick 
nor,  "  who,  I  fancied,"  says  Howells  in  his 
"  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance,"  "had 
not  then  read  my  poem;  but  he  seemed  to 
know  what  it  was  from  the  junior  partner, 
and  he  asked  me  whether  I  had  been  paid 
for  it.  I  confessed  that  I  had  not,  and 
then  he  got  out  a  chamois-leather  bag,  and 
took  from  it  five  half-eagles  in  gold  and 
laid  them  on  the  green  cloth  top  of  the 
desk,  in  much  the  shape  and  of  much  the 
size  of  the  Great  Bear.  I  have  never  since 

15 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

felt  myself  paid  so  lavishly  for  any  literary 
work,  though  I  have  had  more  for  a  single 
piece  than  the  twenty-five  dollars  that 
dazzled  me  in  this  constellation.  The  pub 
lisher  seemed  aware  of  the  poetic  character 
of  the  transaction ;  he  let  the  pieces  lie  a 
moment,  before  he  gathered  them  up  and 
put  them  into  my  hand,  and  said,  *  I  al 
ways  think  it  is  pleasant  to  have  it  in 
gold.'  " 

While  making  his  residence  in  Boston, 
Howells  met  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  Haw 
thorne  and  Emerson.  Emerson  rather  dis 
couraged  him  by  remarking  as  they  were 
saying  good-bye  to  each  other,  that  one 
might  very  well  give  a  pleasant  hour  to 
poetry  "  now  and  then." 

When  the  young  Ohioan  met  Mr.  Fields 
again  he  proposed  himself  as  assistant  editor 
of  The  Atlantic  Monthly.  Mr.  Fields  re 
plied  that  if  the  post  had  not  just  been 
16 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 

filled   the  intrepid    poet  certainly  should 
have  had  it. 

"  He  was  charmingly  kind,"  writes  Mr. 
Ho  wells  of  the  interview ;  '*  he  entered  with 
the  sweetest  interest  into  the  story  of  my 
economic  life,  which  had  been  full  of  changes 
and  chances  already.  But  when  I  said 
very  seriously  that  I  was  tired  of  these 
fortuities,  and  would  like  to  be  settled  in 
something  he  asked  with  dancing  eyes, 

"  'Why,  how  old  are  you  ? ' 

"  '  I  am  twenty-three/  I  answered,  and 
then  the  laughing  fit  took  him  again. 

"  '  Well,'  he  said,  <  you  begin  young,  out 
there!'" 

From  1861  to  1865,  during  the  War  of 
the  Rebellion,  Mr.  Howells  was  United 
States  Consul  at  Venice,  which  position 
was  a  reward  for  his  life  of  Lincoln.  In 
Venice  he  wrote  occasionally  for  American 
newspapers ;  and  there  he  also  wrote  the 

17 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

articles  of  which,  eventually,  his  delightful 
"  Venetian  Life"  and  "  Italian  Journeys" 
were  composed. 

Returning  to  this  country,  he  re-entered 
the  newspaper  world,  working  mostly  for 
the  New  York  Tribune  and  the  New  York 
Times  ;  and  he  also  became  a  regular  con 
tributor  to  The  Nation.  In  1866  he  achieved 
his  great  ambition,  Mr.  Fields  appointing 
him  assistant  editor  of  TJie  Atlantic  Monthly. 
From  that  year  until  1886,  when  he  moved 
to  New  York,  he  lived  on  terms  of  enviable 
intimacy  with  the  group  of  great  writers 
which  made  Boston  the  one  brilliant  literary 
centre  the  country  has  ever  seen. 

However,  this  success  did  not  come  until 
after  many  defeats.  Mr.  Howells's  letters 
from  Venice  were  published  regularly  in 
the  Boston  Advertiser ;  but  elsewhere,  for 
the  most  part,  the  young  author  had  met 
little  encouragement.  It  was  only  just  be- 
18 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HO  WELLS 

fore  he  left  Venice,  when  Lowell,  then,  with 
Prof.  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  joint  editor  of 
the  North  American  Review,  accepted  How- 
ells's  article  on  "  Recent  Italian  Comedy," 
that  the  cloud  broke.  Lowell  accepted  the 
manuscript  in  "  one  of  his  loveliest  letters," 
as  Mr.  Howells  says.  "  His  message"  the 
author  confesses,  "  came  after  years  of 
thwarted  endeavor,  and  reinstated  me  in 
the  belief  that  I  could  still  do  something  in 
literature.  To  be  sure,  the  letters  in  the 
Advertiser  had  begun  to  make  their  impres 
sion  ;  among  the  first  great  pleasures  they 
brought  me  was  a  recognition  from  my  dip 
lomatic  chief  in  Vienna ;  but  I  valued  my 
admission  to  the  North  American  peculiarly 
because  it  was  Lowell  let  me  in,  and  be 
cause  I  felt  that  in  his  charge  it  must  be 
the  place  of  highest  honor."  Financially, 
the  encouragement  was  slight.  The  North 
American  was  "  as  poor  as  it  was  proud  " ; 

19 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

and  it  paid  Howells  for  his  article  at  the 
rate  of  only  two  dollars  a  page.  From  the 
Advertiser  he  had  been  paid  at  the  rate  of 
about  a  dollar  a  thousand  words.  It  was 
on  March  19,  1866,  his  twenty-ninth  birth 
day,  that  the  vagrant  author  began  his  work 
on  The  Atlantic  at  a  salary  of  fifty  dollars 
a  week. 

"  The  whole  affair,"  Mr.  Howells  writes, 
"was  conducted  by  Fields  with  his  unfailing 
tact  and  kindness,  but  it  could  not  be  kept 
from  me  that  the  qualification  I  had  as 
practical  printer  for  the  work  was  most 
valued,  if  not  the  most  valued,  and  that  as 
proof-reader  I  was  expected  to  make  it 
avail  on  the  side  of  economy.  Somewhere 
in  life's  feast  the  course  of  humble-pie  must 
always  come  in ;  and  if  I  did  not  wholly 
relish  this  bit  of  it,  I  dare  say  it  was  good 
for  me,  and  I  digested  it  perfectly." 

It  was  a  most  delicate  position  which  he 
20 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOW  ELLS 

occupied  on  The  Atlantic  from  1866  to 
1872,  when  Fields  withdrew  and  Mr. 
Howells  became  sole  editor.  In  the  begin 
ning,  as  he  says  himself,  he  ventured  to 
distinguish  mediocrity  in  some  verses  by 
Whittier.  "He  sent  me  a  poem,"  says 
Howells,  "  and  I  had  the  temerity  to  return 
it,  and  beg  him  for  something  else.  He  mag 
nanimously  refrained  from  all  show  of 
offence,  and  after  a  while,  when  he  had 
printed  the  poem  elsewhere,  he  gave  me 
another.  By  this  time,  I  perceived  that  I 
had  been  wrong,  not  as  to  the  poem 
returned,  but  as  to  my  function  regarding 
him  and  such  as  he.  I  had  made  my  reflec 
tions,  and  never  again  did  I  venture  to  pass 
upon  what  contributors  of  his  quality  sent 
me.  I  took  it,  and  printed  it,  and  praised 
the  gods ;  and  even  now  I  think  that  with 
such  men  it  was  not  my  duty  to  play  the 
censor  in  the  periodical  which  they  had 

21 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

made  what  it  was.  They  had  set  it  in 
authority  over  American  literature,  and  it 
was  not  for  me  to  put  myself  in  authority 
over  them.  Their  fame  was  in  their  own 
keeping,  and  it  was  not  my  part  to  guard 
it  against  them." 

At  another  time,  when  a  choice  was 
accidentally  enforced  between  a  poem  by 
Holmes  and  a  poem  by  Emerson,  Mr.  How- 
ells  had  the  courage  to  request  Emerson 
that  his  poem  might  be  held  over  for  the 
next  number.  Emerson  wrote  back  to 
"  return  the  proofs  and  break  up  the  forms." 
"  I  could  not  go  to  this  iconoclastic  extreme 
with  the  electrotypes  of  the  magazine," 
says  Mr.  Ho  wells,  "  but  I  could  return  the 
proofs.  I  did  so,  feeling  that  I  had  done 
my  possible,  and  silently  grieving  that 
there  could  be  such  ire  in  heavenly  minds." 

From  1872  until  1880  Mr.  Howells  was 
sole  editor  of  The  Atlantic ;  and  the  rich 
22 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 

social  and  literary  experience  which  he 
gained  during  that  term  he  has  embodied 
in  that  most  delightful  of  American  book 
men's  chronicles,  "  Literary  Friends  and 
Acquaintance." 

Mr.  Howells's  first  piece  of  fiction,  "Their 
Wedding  Journey,"  was  published  in  1872, 
the  year  that  he  became  sole  editor  of  The 
Atlantic.  Seven  years  ago  in  a  newspaper 
interview,  Mr.  Howells  made  this  statement 
in  regard  to  this  work :  "I  wrote  *  Their 
Wedding  Journey'  without  intending  to 
make  it  a  piece  of  fiction  or  considering  it 
to  be  one  after  I  had  finished  it.  It  was 
simply  a  book  of  American  travel,  which  I 
hoped  to  make  attractive  by  a  sugar  coating 
of  romance.  I  was  very  familiar  with  the 
route  over  which  I  had  taken  the  bridal 
couple,  and  I  knew  it  was  beautiful,  and, 
like  most  American  scenery,  was  not  appre 
ciated.  The  book  was  more  of  a  success 

23 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

than  I  expected  it  to  be.  I  attributed  its 
success  to  the  descriptions  of  American 
scenery  and  places.  I  gave  it  to  a  family 
friend  and  asked  her  to  mark  those  parts  of 
it  which  she  thought  real  incidents.  I  was 
very  much  astonished  and  greatly  pleased 
to  find,  when  she  returned  it,  that  she  had 
marked  some  passages  which  were  purely 
invention.  This  made  me  ask  myself  if  I 
might  not  hope  to  write  a  novel  some  day." 
The  question  was  evidently  answered  in 
the  affirmative,  for  after  1872  Mr.  Howells's 
output  of  fiction  became  regular  and  pro 
fuse.  His  novels  have  all  been  more  or  less 
popular.  He  is  fondest  himself  of  "A 
Modern  Instance,"  we  are  told ;  and  he  re 
gards  "  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes  "  as  his 
best  novel.  It  may  safely  be  said  that  the 
book  which  it  was  the  greatest  pleasure  to 
him  to  write  is  "  Literary  Friends  and 
Acquaintance,"  published  late  last  year. 
24 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HO  WELLS 

Altogether  his  works  number  about  seventy- 
five.  Mr.  Ho  wells  is  a  plodder.  "  I  be 
lieve,"  he  once  said  to  an  interviewer,  "  in 
the  inspiration  of  hard  work."  As  a  rule 
all  successful  authors  have  held  this  belief. 

Mr.  Howells  resigned  from  The  Atlantic 
in  1880  to  engage  in  general  literary  work. 
Six  years  later  he  formally  transferred  his 
allegiance  from  Boston  to  New  York  by  ac 
cepting  charge  of  "  The  Editor's  Study  "  in 
Harper  s.  Afterward,  for  a  time,  he  was 
editor  of  The  Cosmopolitan.  Late  in  1900 
he  resumed  his  editorial  connection  with 
Harper's. 

Although  admired  the  world  over,  and 
dignified  with  the  title  of  Doctor  of  Laws, 
which  he  got  from  Yale  in  1871,  Mr. 
Howells  is  hospitable  and  genial,  just  as  Dr. 
Holmes  was ;  and  many  young  writers  with 
more  or  less  glittering  names  owe  much  to 
his  counsel  and  his  encouragement. 

25 


BRET    HARTE. 


BRET  HARTE 


HARTE  has  been  called  the 
writer  of  the  best  short  stories  in 
the  English  language.  A  literary 
court  of  arbitration  would  doubtless  find 
that  the  best  of  his  short  stories  are  without 
superiors.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that 
the  reading  public  is  still  under  the  magic 
spell  which  Mr.  Harte  wove  more  than  a 
third  of  a  century  ago  with  "  The  Luck  of 
Roaring  Camp,"  "  Plain  Language  from 
Truthful  James,"  "Tennessee's  Partner," 
"  Higgles"  and  the  other  works  which  first 
called  attention  to  the  author's  still  unques 
tioned  genius.  "  The  Luck  of  Roaring 
Camp"  and  "  Under  the  Redwoods"  mark 
the  present  extremes  of  one  of  the  most 
romantic  chapters  in  our  literary  history. 

27 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Some  years  ago,  when  the  popular  writer 
and  his  wife  were  spending  the  summer  at 
Newport,  a  woman  said  confidentially  to  Mrs. 
Harte,  "  What  is  your  husband's  real  name?  " 
It  evidently  did  not  seem  natural  to  the 
inquirer  than  an  author  could  always  have 
borne  such  a  crisp  and  striking  name ;  and 
the  same  idea,  that  the  name  must  be  sim 
ply  a  happy  pseudonym,  has,  we  believe, 
struck  many  others.  The  idea  is  partly 
wrong  and  partly  right.  Francis  Brett 
Harte  was  his  name  originally.  That  form 
was  changed  to  Francis  Bret  Harte,  then  to 
F.  Bret  Harte,  and  finally  to  the  attractive 
form  which  long  ago  endeared  itself  to  the 
whole  English-reading  world.  For  it  is 
well  known,  undoubtedly,  that  the  Bret 
Harte  stories  are  quite  as  popular  in  Eng 
land  and  in  the  British  colonies  as  in  the 
United  States ;  that  Germany  yields  to  none 
in  her  admiration  for  them ;  and  that  one  of 
28 


BRET  HARTE 


them,  "Gabriel  Conroy,"  has  been  printed 
in  at  least  fourteen  languages.  Indeed,  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago  the  name  of  Bret 
Harte  was  as  powerful  the  world  over  as 
was  Mr.  Kipling's  a  few  years  since.  Per 
haps  the  felicitous  brevity  of  the  name  was 
one  of  the  elements  of  that  power. 

Bret  Harte  was  born  in  Albany,  N.Y., 
on  August  25,  1839.  His  father  was  at 
that  time  a  teacher  in  the  Albany  Female 
Seminary.  Bret  was  still  in  boyhood  when 
his  father  died.  The  boy,  who  had  received 
an  ordinary  public  school  education,  went 
to  California  with  his  mother  in  1854.  The 
Golden  State  was  then  one  enormous  min 
ing-camp.  The  laws  were  largely  unwritten. 
A  passion  either  for  gold  or  for  adventure 
had  taken  possession  of  thousands  of  persons 
and  thrown  them  together  in  one  of  the 
wildest  parts  of  the  world.  In  this  excit 
ing  school  of  life  young  Harte  studied  his 

29 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

first  lessons  of  life.  For  three  years  he  was 
thrown  hither  and  thither,  with  his  eyes  and 
his  ears  wide  open,  and  with  his  mind  spong 
ing  up  the  lively  incidents  which,  through 
his  skillful  pen,  have  since  become  the  idyls 
of  the  pioneer  West,  with  all  its  vice  and 
virtue,  its  heroes  and  cravens,  its  showy 
wealth  and  its  heart-touching  poverty.  For 
a  year  he  was  an  express  rider,  with  a  route 
lying  among  the  ravines  and  gulches  of  the 
northern  part  of  the  State;  and  what  he 
had  not  learned  by  his  own  observation  he 
learned  during  this  period  from  other  obser 
vers.  This  was  the  time  when  Yuba  Bill 
and  the  other  heroic  road-agents  took  form  in 
his  imagination.  At  another  time  he  picked 
up  the  trade  of  compositor  in  a  newspaper 
office  in  Eureka;  and  at  still  another  time 
he  went  out  prospecting,  and  there  was  a 
sign  of  later  days  in  the  fact  that  before 
the  three  years  of  his  uncertainty  came  to  an 
30 


BRET  HARTE 


end  he  taught  school  for  a  short  while.  It 
was  then  that,  for  the  first  time,  he  indulged 
the  literary  instincts  awakened  by  his  ex 
perience  in  the  newspaper  office  in  Eureka. 
This  budding  age  is  outlined  in  "  M'liss." 

In  1857  the  young  man  settled  down  in 
San  Francisco  as  a  compositor  in  the  office 
of  the  Golden  Era,  a  weekly  periodical.  A 
few  round-about-town  sketches  called  "A 
Boy's  Dog,"  "  Sidewalkings,"  and  «  In  a 
Balcony,"  submitted  most  humbly  and  re 
spectfully  to  the  editor,  brought  to  the  am 
bitious  printer  the  reward  of  an  invitation 
to  join  the  editorial  staff.  With  the  accept 
ance  of  the  invitation  began  a  most  brilliant 
literary  career.  We  are  indebted  to  a  friend 
of  the  author's  for  the  statement :  "  Those 
were  busy  days,  and  much  of  the  matter 
ground  out  in  that  time  of  probation  is  as 
pregnant  with  genius  and  wit  as  any  that 
he  has  seen  fit  to  retain  in  his  complete 

31 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

edition."  But  the  edition  is  not  yet  com 
plete,  we  may  remark. 

When,  not  long  afterward,  a  weekly  called 
The  Californian  was  established  in  San 
Francisco,  the  new  writer  went  over  to  it 
enthusiastically.  In  the  columns  of  this 
periodical  and  of  some  of  the  daily  papers 
appeared  the  poems  and  the  sketches  which 
rounded  out  Mr.  Harte's  "  time  of  probation." 
The  Calif  ornian  was  the  means  of  acquaint 
ing  him  with  Mark  Twain,  also  a  new  figure 
on  the  literary  horizon.  Indeed,  it  has  been 
said  by  men  who  knew  the  little  group  of 
enthusiasts  connected  with  The  Calif  ornian 
that  it  was  Harte  who  induced  the  Missis 
sippi  pilot  first  to  put  to  use  his  genius  as 
a  humorist. 

This   catch-penny  work  of  the  days  of 

The    Calif  ornian  was  profitable    to  Harte 

simply  as  experience.     Like  many  another 

story-teller,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that 

32 


BRET  HARTE 


steady  employment,  with  a  few  leisure 
hours  in  the  day,  would  do  more  to  advance 
him  than  anything  else,  and  so  he  found 
work,  first  in  the  United  States  Surveyor 
General's  office,  then  with  the  United 
States  Marshal,  and  later  in  the  mint. 
Shortly  before  going  to  the  mint  he  was 
introduced  to  Easterners  by  a  sketch  in  The 
Atlantic  Monthly,  "  The  Legend  of  Monte 
Diablo,"  which  introduction  was  due  largely 
to  the  patronage  of  Jessie  Benton  Fremont, 
one  of  the  most  cultivated  women  in  Cali 
fornia.  His  secretaryship  at  the  mint, 
which  began  in  1864,  led  to  a  very  produc 
tive  period,  some  of  the  fruits  of  which  are 
"John  Burns  of  Gettysburg,"  "The  Plio 
cene  Skull,"  "  The  Society  on  the  Stanis- 
low"  and  the  remarkable  "Condensed 
Novels,"  in  the  writing  of  which,  as  one  of 
the  old-time  critics  remarked  "a  new  set  of 
faculties  was  required." 

33 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

At  this  point  naturally  comes  in  the 
question,  What  was  Bret  Harte's  first  book  ? 
The  question  was  answered  last  year  by  the 
author  himself,  in  this  statement :  "  When 
I  say  that  my  first  book  was  not  my  own, 
and  contained  beyond  the  title  page  not  one 
word  of  my  own  composition,  I  trust  that 
I  shall  not  be  accused  of  trifling  with  par 
adox,  or  tardily  unbosoming  myself  of 
plagiary.  But  the  fact  remains  that  in  pri 
ority  of  publication  the  first  book  for  which 
I  became  responsible,  and  which  probably 
provoked  more  criticism  than  anything  I 
have  written  since,  was  a  small  compilation 
of  California  poems  indited  by  other  hands. 
There  was  an  ominous  calm  when  the 
book  reached  the  market.  Out  of  it  the 
bolt  fell.  A  well-known  mining  weekly, 
which  I  will  poetically  veil  under  the  title 
of  the  Red  Dog  Jay  ffawk,was  the  first 
to  swoop  down  upon  the  tuneful  and  unsus- 
34 


BRET  HARTE 


pecting  quarry  as  follows  :  4  The  hog  wash 
and  "  purp  "  stuff  ladled  out  from  the  slop 

bucket   of   Messrs. and   Company,  of 

'Frisco,  by  some  lop-eared  Eastern  appren 
tice  and  called  "  A  Compilation  of  Califor- 
nian  Verses,"  might  be  passed  over  as  far 
as  criticism  goes.  A  club  in  the  hands  of 
any  able-bodied  citizen  of  Red  Dog  and  a 
steamboat  ticket  to  the  bay,  cheerfully  con 
tributed  from  this  office,  would  be  all 
sufficient.  But  when  an  imported  green 
horn  dares  to  call  his  flapdoodle  mixture 
"  Calif  ornian,"  it  is  an  insult  to  the  State 
that  has  produced  the  gifted  Yellow  Ham 
mer,  whose  lofty  flights  have  from  time  to 
time  dazzled  our  readers  in  the  columns  of 
the  Jay  Hawk.  That  this  complacent 
editorial  jackass,  browsing  among  the  dock 
and  the  thistles  which  he  has  served  up  in 
this  volume,  should  make  allusion  to  Cali 
fornia's  greatest  bard,  is  rather  a  confession 

35 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

of  idiocy  than  a  slur  upon  the  genius  of 
our  esteemed  contributor.'  ' 

There  were  other  bolts  quite  as  forceful, 
but  as  a  sample  of  the  literary  criticism 
found  in  California  in  the  great  mining 
days,  and  also  of  the  reins  that  kept  editor 
ial  enterprise  in  check,  the  foregoing  will 
suffice. 

In  1868,  while  Mr.  Harte  was  still  work 
ing  in  the  mint  and  quietly  hitching  his 
literary  wagon  to  a  star,  Mr.  Roman,  an  am 
bitious  San  Francisco  publisher,  projected 
The  Overland  Monthly,  a  periodical  that 
has  had  considerable  influence  on  the  liter 
ary  growth  of  the  far  West.  He  invited 
the  secretary  of  the  mint  to  be  its  editor. 
The  invitation  was  accepted,  and  the  editor- 
to-be  at  once  went  to  work  on  a  story  for 
the  first  number,  which  was  to  appear  in 
July.  The  scheme  of  the  magazine  was 
thoroughly  Eastern,  but  the  editor  decided 
36 


BRET  HARTE 


that,  for  the  honor  of  the  West,  his  story 
should  have  a  strong  local  flavor.  He  called 
it "  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,"  and,  with 
out  a  thought  of  any  impropriety,  had  it 
put  into  type.  For  the  sake  of  accuracy 
we  take  the  liberty  of  relating  the  conse 
quences  as  they  were  related  in  the  old 
days : 

"  The  first  intimation  that  it  was  likely 
to  arouse  criticism  of  any  kind,  good  or  bad, 
came  to  him  in  the  form  of  a  protest  from 
the  young  woman  who  read  proof  on  the 
paper.  She  sent  word  to  him  that  if  matter 
as  indecent  as  *  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp' 
was  to  be  printed  in  The  Overland  Monthly 
she  could  not  retain  her  place  as  an  employee 
of  the  paper.  Harte  read  the  story  over 
again  in  proof  to  see  where  the  indecencies 
were,  but  could  find  none.  Then  he  took 
it  to  the  owner  of  the  paper,  and  asked  his 
opinion  of  it.  The  owner  took  it  home  and 

37 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

read  it  to  his  wife.  It  made  her  cry,  and 
she  thought  it  was  a  powerful  production, 
but  she  agreed  with  the  proof-reader  that  it 
was  too  daring  in  its  conception,  and  too 
frank  in  its  details  even  for  the  not-over  par 
ticular  society  which  inhabited  California. 
Harte  heard  her  judgment  with  amazement. 
He  was  utterly  unable  to  see  anything  im 
proper  in  the  story.  Finally  the  owner  of  the 
paper  so  far  went  over  to  thesideof  the  story's 
critics  as  to  say  that  he  thought  the  story 
would  have  to  be  left  out.  Harte  took  a 
day  and  a  night  to  think  the  matter  over, 
and  then  he  announced  his  own  decision. 
He  said  that  if  the  story  was  left  out  of 
that  month's  issue  of  The  Overland  Monthly 
he  would  himself  insist  on  being  left  out  of 
all  connection  with  the  paper  in  the  future. 
There  was  no  quarrel.  He  simply  was 
certain  that  his  judgment  was  good,  and 
felt  that  if  it  was  considered  bad  on  this 
38 


BRET  HARTE 


occasion  by  the  owner,  he  would  never  be 
able  to  suit  him  in  the  future.  Finally, 
after  the  matter  had  been  placed  on  this 
definite  basis,  the  owner  made  up  his  mind 
to  let  the  story  run."  We  have  met  the 
account  of  the  momentous  difficulty  in  a 
slightly  different  form,  but  the  account 
which  we  have  repeated  may  be  accepted 
as  substantially  correct. 

"  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  "  did  not 
please  the  Calif ornians,  and  it  seemed  for 
some  time  as  if  the  censure  of  the  feminine 
critics  would  be  justified  popularly;  but 
when  the  flattering  opinions  of  the  Eastern 
readers  were  reported,  the  gold  hunters 
changed  their  minds.  No  doubt  they  were 
astonished  to  hear  that  a  Boston  publishing 
house,  at  that  time  the  most  powerful 
organization  of  its  kind  in  the  land,  had 
offered  to  accept  anything  the  author  might 
offer  at  his  own  terms. 

39 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Harte  was  busy  sending  provisions  to  the 
snowbound  camps  in  the  Sierras  in  the  fall 
of  1868,  so  that  his  next  story,  «  The  Out 
casts  of  Poker  Flat,"  made  its  appearance 
as  late  as  January,  1869.  That  same  year, 
too, "  Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James," 
popularly  known  as  "The  Heathen  Chinee," 
came  to  delight  the  reading  public ;  and 
since  that  time  Bret  Harte's  fame  has  re 
mained  more  or  less  brilliant. 

For  a  time  he  filled  the  chair  of  Modern 
Literature  in  the  University  of  California. 
In  1871  he  came  East.  The  journey  was 
a  triumph.  Nothing  like  it  ever  occurred 
before,  or  has  occurred  since.  Once  in  the 
East,  The  Atlantic  Monthly  agreed  to  pay 
him  one  thousand  dollars  a  month  for  a 
poem  and  a  short  story;  but  the  author 
soon  found  the  agreement  irksome.  He 
lectured  and  wrote  at  his  leisure  in  this 
country  until  1878,  when  he  was  appointed 
40 


BRET  HAETE 


United  States  Consul  at  Cref  eld,  Germany, 
and  two  years  later  he  was  sent  to  Glasgow. 
His  term  there  closed  in  1885,  and  ever 
since  he  has  made  London  his  home. 

However,  he  has  always  been  Calif ornian 
in  his  stories.  His  latest  offering,  "  Under 
the  Redwoods,"  is  as  reflective  of  the  grow 
ing  days  of  the  West  as  are  early  master 
pieces  like  "  Tennessee's  Partner "  and 
"Higgles."  His  star  may  be  a  trifle  lower 
in  the  heavens  than  it  was  when  he  went 
abroad,  but  it  is  still  of  the  first  magnitude. 


41 


MARK  TWAIN 


7|  ^ARK  TWAIN'S  real  name  is 
/ \f I  Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens. 
-*•  '  ^**~  There  is  a  story  to  the  effect 
that  one  of  his  ancestors,  by  name  Gregory 
Clement,  an  adherent  of  Cromwell,  added 
his  voice  to  the  condemnation  of  Charles  I. 
and  was  beheaded  for  it  by  Charles  II. 
However,  it  is  neither  as  Clement  nor  as 
Clemens  that  the  most  celebrated  of  con 
temporaneous  American  authors  is,  or  has 
been,  popularly  known,  but  by  the  pen-name 
of  Mark  Twain,  which  he  adopted  when  he 
was  piloting  on  the  Mississippi,  more  than 
forty  years  ago. 

In  fun  or  in  earnest  —  it  is  hard  to 
fathom  his  moods  —  Mr.  Clemens  said 
lately  that  he  was  working  on  an  autobiog- 

43 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

raphy  which  must  not  be  opened  until  he 
has  been  in  his  grave  for  a  century.  So 
far  as  the  main  facts  are  concerned,  how 
ever,  the  humorist's  autobiography  is  al 
ready  an  open  book.  It  has  been  chronicled 
piece  by  piece  in  a  hundred  magazines  and 
in  a  thousand  newspapers  since  1868,  when 
"  Innocents  Abroad "  appeared,  up  to  the 
present  day.  Probably  no  other  living 
author  has  been  so  beset  by  the  requests  of 
editors  and  the  importunities  of  reporters ; 
and  assuredly  no  other  living  author  has 
been  more  amiable  or  more  liberal  in  his 
responses.  No,  a  good  portion  of  the  auto 
biography  of  Mr.  Clemens,  or  Mark  Twain, 
— we  shall  use  each  name  impartially, — 
will  be  submitted  to  the  public  within  a 
hundred  hours  after  his  death  —  and  may 
that  inevitable  conclusion  be  far,  far  off  I 

As  a  man  and  as  a  writer  Mr.  Clemens 
has   invariably  carried   the  colors  of   the 
44 


MARK  TWAIN 


typical  American.  A  stern  sense  of  duty 
and  of  honor,  a  seldom  absent  sense  of 
humor,  inexhaustible  energy,  dauntless 
pluck,  unfeigned  simplicity  and  abiding 
sympathy  and  fidelity,  are  the  salient  char 
acteristics  of  the  typical  American  —  of 
Mr.  Clemens.  At  the  same  tune,  above 
and  beyond  the  writer's  unexcelled  powers 
of  observation  and  richness  of  imagination 
is  his  fine  sense  of  artistry.  "  Mark  Twain's 
humor  will  live  forever,"  Mr.  Ho  wells  is 
reported  to  have  said  some  years  ago,  "  be 
cause  of  its  artistic  qualities.  Mark  Twain 
portrays  and  interprets  real  types,  not  only 
with  exquisite  appreciation  and  sympathy, 
but  with  a  force  and  truth  of  drawing  that 
makes  them  permanent."  So  fastidious  a 
critic  as  Prof.  Barrett  Wendell  has  lately 
dwelt  on  the  constant  and  irresistible  charm 
of  Huckleberry  Finn. 

Mr.  Clemens  was  born  in  a  little  Mis- 

45 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

souri  village  named  Florida  on  Nov.  30, 
1835.  His  father,  John  Marshall  Clemens, 
of  a  good  Virginia  family,  was  one  of  the 
pioneers  who,  early  in  the  century,  crossed 
the  Alleghanies  and  sought  new  fortunes  in 
the  unsettled  West.  His  mother,  whose 
maiden  name  was  Elizabeth  Lampton,  also, 
like  her  husband,  came  of  good  English 
stock.  Her  forefathers  had  plunged  into 
the  wilds  with  Daniel  Boone ;  and  she  her 
self  has  been  described  as  "one  of  those 
beautiful,  graceful,  and  vivacious  Kentucky 
girls  who  have  contributed  so  much  to  the 
reputation  of  that  fortunate  State."  A 
cousin  of  Mr.  Clemens,  by  the  way,  who 
was  one  of  the  humorist's  playmates  sixty 
years  ago,  is  the  Rev.  Eugene  Joshua  Lamp- 
ton,  who,  by  some  of  the  people  in  Mis 
souri,  is  called  "  the  Bishop  of  the  diocese." 
Elder  Lampton  is  the  possessor  of  the 
original  subscription  list  which  Mr.  Clemens 
46 


MARK  TWAIN 


carried  when  he  was  a  newspaper  boy  in 
Hannibal.  But  this  is  reaching  ahead  a 
little. 

They  say  that  Mr.  Clemens's  mother  was 
not  only  remarkably  winsome  but  remark 
ably  intelligent.  When  the  author  was  a 
youngster  one  of  his  relatives  said  of  him: 
"  He's  a  perfect  little  human  kaleidoscope." 
"  Yes,"  added  another,  "  and  he  gets  that 
from  his  mother."  Samuel's  mother  could 
"  write  well,"  which  was  no  small  accom 
plishment  in  the  south-west  in  the  thirties. 

When  Samuel  was  about  nine  years  old 
his  father  decided  to  move  to  Hannibal,  in 
the  same  State.  The  prime  cause  of  this 
immigration  was  the  failure  of  the  elder 
Clemens  to  make  Salt  River  navigable; 
hence,  as  one  writer  has  suggested,  the  prob 
able  origin  of  the  old  synonym  for  disaster, 
"  gone  up  Salt  River." 

Young  Clemens  was  sent  to  school  in 

47 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Hannibal.  Some  of  his  schoolmates  are 
living  in  the  old  town  to-day.  He  seems 
to  have  enjoyed  the  rule  of  two  teachers, 
Miss  Newcomb  and  Miss  Lucy  Davis.  Phy 
sically,  he  was  not  a  strong  boy,  but  intel 
lectually  he  seems  always  to  have  been 
more  than  a  match  for  any  boy  of  his  age. 
He  had  two  brothers,  Orion,  who  was  con 
siderably  older,  and  Henry,  who  was  the 
youngest  of  them  all.  Samuel  attended 
school  until  his  father  died  in  1847.  The 
death  of  the  father,  who  had  just  been 
elected  county  judge,  was  a  hard  blow  to 
the  family.  After  the  death  of  his  father, 
the  subject  of  our  sketch  went  to  work  for 
the  local  newspaper  as  a  carrier.  After 
ward  he  served  as  "  devil "  and  type-setter, 
and  then,  having  completed  his  apprentice 
ship  and  thinking  to  better  himself  else 
where,  he  set  off  on  foot  for  the  East. 
Doing  odd  jobs  at  the  case  and  the  press, 
48 


MARK  TWAIN 


he  finally  reached  Philadelphia.  Thence 
he  went  to  New  York.  But  the  East  did 
not  please  him,  and  at  seventeen  he  was 
back  in  Hannibal. 

He  was  now  on  his  uppers,  as  the  phrase 
is,  and,  in  addition  to  its  adventurous  side, 
the  financial  side  of  steamboat  life  on  the 
Mississippi  magnetized  him.  There,  for 
instance,  was  the  pilot,  the  guide  of  the  great 
smoking  craft,  a  man  who  knew  everything 
thought  worth  knowing,  a  man  looked  up  to 
by  every  merchant,  every  traveler  and  every 
desperado.  Samuel  determined  to  become 
a  pilot,  and  the  picturesque  Capt.  Horace 
E.  Bixby  took  him  under  his  wing.  In  his 
"  Life  on  the  Mississippi"  Mark  Twain  de 
scribes  with  all  his  eloquence  the  interesting 
and  exciting  life  of  a  pilot  on  the  treacher 
ous  river.  And  was  not  the  pilot's  a  great 
and  attractive  post  for  a  young  man  ?  "  If 
you  will  take,"  says  Mark,  "the  longest 

49 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

street  in  New  York,  and  travel  up  and  down 
it,  conning  its  features  patiently  until  you 
know  every  house  and  window  and  door  and 
lamp-post  and  big  and  little  sign  by  heart, 
and  know  them  so  accurately  that  you  can 
instantly  name  the  one  you  are  abreast  of 
when  you  are  set  down  at  random  in  that 
street  in  the  middle  of  an  inky-black  night, 
you  will  then  have  a  tolerable  notion  of  the 
amount  and  the  exactness  of  a  pilot's  knowl 
edge  who  carries  the  Mississippi  River  in 
his  head.  And  then  if  you  will  go  on  until 
you  know  every  street-crossing,  the  charac 
ter,  size  and  position  of  the  crossing-stones, 
and  the  varying  depth  of  mud  in  each 
of  those  numberless  places,  you  will  have 
some  idea  of  what  the  pilot  must  know  in 
order  to  keep  a  Mississippi  steamer  out  of 
trouble.  Next,  if  you  will  take  half  of  the 
signs  on  that  long  street  and  change  their 
places  once  a  month,  and  still  manage  to 
50 


MARK  TWAIN 


know  their  new  positions  accurately  on  dark 
nights,  and  keep  up  with  these  repeated 
changes  without  making  any  mistakes,  you 
will  understand  what  is  required  of  a  pilot's 
peerless  memory  by  the  fickle  Mississippi." 

The  life  on  the  river,  with  its  ever-chang 
ing  dramatic  and  entertaining  incidents, 
awoke  the  young  man's  sleeping  imagination 
—  gave  him  a  strong  desire  to  put  to  use 
the  modest  literary  methods  which  he 
had  acquired  as  an  itinerant  printer.  Mr. 
Howells,  too,  it  will  be  noticed,  first  had 
the  passion  for  authorship  aroused  in  him 
by  the  types  and  the  presses. 

The  first  sketches  which  Mr.  Clemens 
sent  to  the  local  papers  were  signed  "  losh," 
a  meaningless  signature,  which  quickly  made 
the  young  author  desire  something  better. 
The  improvement  came  to  him  when  one 
day  he  heard  a  "  big  black  negro"  who  was 
taking  soundings  call  out  "  Mark  twain !  " 

51 


LITTLE  PILGBIMAGES 

which  meant  that  there  were  two  fathoms 
of  water.  The  call  struck  the  pilot's  fancy, 
and  he  kept  it  in  mind  for  future  use. 

Mr.  Clemens  served  in  the  pilot-house  — 
one  of  the  best  school-houses  in  the  world, 
it  may  be  said  —  until  the  war  broke  out. 
Then  he  ran  blockades  for  a  while,  and  for 
two  weeks  he  carried  a  gun  in  the  Confed 
erate  army,  under  General  Harris.  The 
two  weeks'  service  cooled  his  ardor,  and  he 
went  farther  west  with  his  brother  Orion, 
who,  as  a  sympathizer  with  the  Union  side, 
had  received  an  appointment  as  Secretary  of 
the  Territory  of  Nevada.  Samuel  was  to 
act  as  his  brother's  secretary,  but  as  in  this 
office  he  did  nothing  and  earned  nothing, 
he,  after  an  attempt  at  prospecting,  joined 
the  staff  of  the  Virginia  City  Enterprise. 
It  was  as  the  Enterprise's  correspondent  at 
the  capital  of  the  Territory,  Carson  City, 
that  Mr.  Clemens  first  used  the  striking 
52 


MARK  TWAIN 


pseudonym  "Mark  Twain."  But  he  had 
no  taste  for  routine  work ;  or,  rather,  his 
manner  of  garnishing,  often  with  his  sting 
ing  satire,  his  routine  work,  did  not  suit  the 
taste  of  the  editor  of  the  Enterprise,  and  at 
the  end  of  six  months  Mark  Twain  stamped 
the  dust  of  Nevada  from  his  shoes  and  struck 
out  for  California,  where  he  readily  secured 
employment  on  the  Union.  In  the  spring 
of  1865  he  took  an  interest  with  Bret  Harte 
in  a  short-lived  weekly  called  The  Calif or- 
nian,  and  some  of  the  humorous  articles 
which  he  wrote  for  that  publication  were 
widely  copied  in  the  East.  Later  the  Union 
sent  him  to  the  Hawaiian  Islands  to  describe 
the  sugar  industry.  His  work  as  a  corres 
pondent  was  very  successful,  and  so  was  the 
lecture  tour  which  he  made  in  California 
when  he  returned. 

Major  Pond,   by  the  way,  relates  that 
Mark  Twain  committed  his  lecture  to  mem- 

53 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

ory  and  was  entirely  confident  of  success; 
still,  desiring  to  forestall  even  the  possibility 
of  failure,  he  arranged  with  some  friend  of 
his  —  Major  Pond  has  forgotten  her  name 
— to  sit  in  a  box  and  start  the  applause  if 
he  should  look  in  her  direction  and  stroke 
his  mustache.  "Instead  of  failing,  how 
ever,"  the  Major  reports,  "  the  lecture 
started  propitiously,  and  that  caused  Mark 
to  forget  his  instructions  to  the  lady.  By 
and  by,  unconsciously,  when  the  audience 
was  filled  to  the  neck  with  pleasure  and  sore 
with  laughter,  he  unwittingly  turned  to 
the  box  where  his  friend  sat  and  pulled 
his  mustache.  At  the  time  he  was  saying 
nothing  particularly  good  or  funny,  but  the 
anxious  lady  took  his  action  for  the  signal, 
and  almost  broke  her  fan  on  the  edge  of  the 
box  in  a  fury  of  applause."  It  took  all 
the  nerve  which  Mark  had  accumulated 
among  the  gamblers  and  crevasses  of  the 
54 


MARK  TWAIN 


Mississippi  to  pass  through  the  embarrass 
ment. 

In  1867  Mr.  Clemens  published  his  first 
book,  "  The  Jumping  Frog  of  Calaveras 
County,  and  Other  Sketches,"  of  which 
about  four  thousand  copies  were  sold.  That 
same  year  he  went  to  Europe  with  the 
excursionists  aboard  the  Quaker  City. 

This  excursion  proved  to  be  the  turning 
point  in  his  career.  He  had  a  commission 
to  write  sketches  of  the  journey  for  the 
Alt  a  Calif ornian.  The  sketches  were  duly 
published,  and  were  then  collected  and 
offered  to  a  publisher  for  marketing  in  book 
form.  The  material  did  not  appeal  to  the 
publisher ;  it  was  startlingly  uncut  and 
undried.  But  Mark  was  insistent,  and  by 
and  by  the  book  appeared  under  the  title 
of  "  Innocents  Abroad."  That  book  estab 
lished  Mark  Twain's  reputation  as  a  humor 
ist.  During  the  thirty-three  years  which 

55 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

have  intervened  between  that  day  and  the 
present,  Mark  Twain's  reputation  has  been 
maintained  at  a  matchless  height.  No  one 
has  been  deemed  worthy  by  the  reading 
public  —  which,  after  all,  is  the  Supreme 
Court  in  literary  matters  —  to  be  called 
his  rival.  And  since  the  publication  of 
"  Innocents  Abroad  "  Mark  Twain's  career 
has  been  public  property,  with  no  signs, 
no  fences,  not  even  a  dog  therein  to  bark 
at  night. 

Mark  Twain's  career  stands  unequalled 
in  the  literary  history  of  America.  He  has 
been  honored  as  an  author  and  as  a  lecturer 
in  almost  every  part  of  the  world.  He  made 
a  fortune  and  lost  it ;  and  now  he  is  making 
another. 

The  literary  historian   must  record   in 

his  case  the  prodigious  achievement  of  an 

author  remaining  for  at  least  thirty-three 

years  —  and  who  knows  how  many  more 

56 


MARK  TWAIN 


will  follow  ?  —  in  almost  steady  demand  in 
print  and  on  the  platform. 

But  in  more  than  a  literary  sense  was 
that  excursion  to  Europe  on  the  Quaker 
City  the  turning-point  in  Mark  Twain's 
career,  for  it  was  on  that  memorable  jour 
ney  that  he  met  Miss  Olivia  L.  Langdon  of 
Elmira,  N.  Y.,  who  afterward  became  his 
wife ;  who  is  the  subject  of  the  most  elo 
quent  words  which  he  ever  penned,  and 
who,  if  we  are  to  believe  their  long-termed 
friend,  Major  Pond,  "  makes  his  works  so 
great." 


57 


"LEW"  WALLACE 


.  "LEW"  WALLACE  is  the 
author  of  the  most  popular  story 
ever  written  by  an  American. 
"Ben  Hur"  has  been  translated  into  every 
language  which  can  boast  of  a  literature.  In 
the  summer  of  1900  it  was  estimated  that 
nine  hundred  thousand  copies  of  the  book 
had  been  sold.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  by  this 
time  the  million  mark  has  been  reached. 
This  literary  phenomenon  is  enlarged  by 
the  fact  that "  Ben-Hur  "  has  never  appeared 
in  a  cheap,  that  is,  a  paper-covered,  edition. 
The  General  has  been  urged  repeatedly  to 
authorize  the  publication  of  such  an  edition, 
but  his  refusal  has  been  firm  from  the  first. 
A  friend  of  his  who  once  heard  the  author 
repeat  his  refusal,  exclaimed:  "Good  for 

59 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

you !  "  It  is  a  question  whether  this 
friendly  enthusiasm  served  any  high  pur 
pose.  If,  as  has  often  been  reported,  "  Ben 
Hur  "  has  converted  many  readers  to  Chris 
tianity,  then  its  circulation  might  well  be 
furthered  in  every  way  possible. 

We  mention  this  circumstance  because  of 
the  half-sacred  nature  which,  not  simply  in 
the  minds  of  emotional  readers  but  also  in 
the  mind  of  the  stern-charactered  author 
himself,  the  book  has  been  gradually  assum 
ing.  A  few  years  ago  General  Wallace, 
while  on  a  lecture  tour  among  the  big 
cities,  related  how  "  Ben  Hur  "  was  con 
ceived  and  brought  forth.  He  frankly 
admitted  that  prior  to  its  conception,  his 
religious  views  were  unstable.  But  as  the 
ideas  took  hold  of  him,  as  chapter  followed 
chapter,  as  the  central  figure  emerged  under 
his  pen  from  the  mist  of  the  early  years  in 
Bethlehem  into  the  divine  glow  of  the  later 
60 


"LEW"  WALLACE 

years  around  Jerusalem,  his  own  life  under 
went  changes,  until  at  length,  when  the 
work  was  done,  he  stepped  forth  a  militant 
Christian  for  the  first  time  in  his  life.  We 
have  heard  many  authors  describe  the  man 
ner  in  which  their  books  were  born,  but 
Lew  Wallace's  description  of  the  birth  of 
"Ben  Hur,"  for  impressiveness  and  for 
entertainment,  stands  alone. 

If  the  General  had  done  nothing  else  but 
write  the  tale  of  Christ  his  fame  would  be 
certain  of  outlasting  generations.  But,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  wonderful  book  repre 
sents  only  one  of  his  many  qualifications  to 
sit  among  the  Immortals,  as  we  shall  see 
presently. 

The  author  was  born  in  Brookville,  Ind., 
on  April  10,  1827.  His  father  was  David 
Wallace,  who,  after  graduation  from  West 
Point  and  a  two  years'  service  in  the  army, 
adopted  the  profession  of  law  and  went  to 

61 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

live  in  the  little  Indiana  town.  Six  years 
after  Lewis  was  born  his  father  was  elected 
lieutenant  governor  by  the  Whigs,  and 
three  years  later  he  was  elected  governor. 
From  1841  to  1843  Governor  Wallace  rep 
resented  his  district  in  Congress.  His 
political  career  was  brought  to  a  close 
simply,  it  is  said,  because  he  voted  for  an 
appropriation  to  assist  Professor  Morse  to 
establish  telegraph  communication  between 
Baltimore  and  Washington.  Lewis's  mother 
was  Esther  Test,  a  daughter  of  a  well-known 
Indiana  judge,  who  is  described  as  a  wom 
an  of  marked  beauty  and  culture,  and  to 
whom  may  be  traced  the  son's  artistic  and 
literary  genius.  She  died  in  1837,  but  her 
children  were  fortunate  to  be  reared  and 
trained  by  a  woman  of  extraordinarily  strong 
character,  Zerelda  Saunders,  the  daughter 
of  an  Indianapolis  doctor,  who,  when  she 
had  devotedly  completed  her  performance 
62 


"LEW"  WALLACE 

of  the  none  too  attractive  duties  of  a  step 
mother,  worked  for  the  causes  of  temper 
ance  and  equal  suffrage,  according  to  a  wo 
man  who  knew  her  well,  with  "  eloquence, 
dignity,  enthusiasm  and  conscientiousness." 
General  Wallace  avoided  school.  Thus 
he  missed  the  basis  which  erudition  de 
mands,  but  he  at  least  improved  his  passion 
for  art  and  for  literature.  What  he  enjoyed 
most  was  to  stroll  out  of  town  to  the  wild- 
grown  fields  and  woods,  and  there  he  would 
read  his  favorite  books  and  study  nature. 
Not  one  of  our  authors  knows  nature  more 
ultimately.  In  fact,  in  those  juvenile  days 
he  thought  seriously  of  becoming  an  artist ; 
and  though,  if  the  thought  had  ever  been 
realized,  literature  would  have  lost  much, 
still  art  might  have  gained  in  equal  propor 
tion.  For  at  the  General's  home  hi  Craw- 
fordsville  are  some  excellent  examples  of 
his  skill  with  the  brush.  One  of  his  notable 

63 


LITTLE  PILGEIMAGES 

pictures  represents  the  conspirators  con 
cerned  in  the  assassination  of  President 
Lincoln.  Another  equally  remarkable  work 
of  art  is  his  portrait  of  the  Sultan  of  Tur 
key.  Many  of  the  General's  friends  have 
valuable  samples  of  his  artistic  genius. 

We  mention  these  facts  to  show  that  there 
was  once  good  ground  for  the  author's  am 
bition  to  be  an  artist.  Yet  at  the  age  of 
eighteen,  just  when  one  would  expect  such 
a  talent  to  exert  itself  irresistibly,  young 
Wallace  enlisted  to  fight  against  Mexico. 
He  was  made  a  second  lieutenant  and  ordered 
to  guard  the  stores  at  the  mouth  of  the  Rio 
Grande.  In  Mexico  he  found  the  material 
for  "  The  Fair  God,"  his  first  novel,  on  which 
he  worked  occasionally  for  twenty  years. 
At  the  end  of  the  Mexican  war  he  returned 
to  Indiana  to  study  law,  in  which  respect, 
it  will  be  noticed,  he  followed  in  the  foot 
steps  of  his  father.  Three  years  after  his 
64 


"LEW"  WALLACE 

admission  to  the  bar  he  married  SnsanElston, 
of  Crawf  ordsville,  herself  of  no  mean  literary 
gifts,  as  her  three  collections  of  charming 
sketches,  "  The  Land  of  the  Pueblos,"  «  The 
Storied  Sea,"  and  "  The  Repose  in  Egypt," 
attest.  The  Wallaces  lived  in  Crawfordsville 
until  the  outbreak  of  the  War  of  the  Rebel 
lion.  Thereupon  the  young  lawyer  went 
straight  to  Indianapolis  and  offered  his  ser 
vices  to  the  governor.  For  a  while  he 
served  as  adjutant-general.  Then  he  took 
the  colonelcy  of  a  regiment  of  zouaves,  and 
with  such  vigor  and  success  that  early  in 
September,  1861,  he  was  bre vetted  brigadier- 
general.  For  gallantry  at  Fort  Donelson 
he  was  afterwards  brevetted  major-general. 
At  the  close  of  the  war  he  was  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  soldiers  in  the  land.  As 
a  recognition  of  his  great  services  —  in  July, 
1864,  according  to  Secretary  Stanton  and 
General  Grant,  he  had  saved  Washington 

65 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

from  destruction  —  he  was  appointed  to 
the  commission  which  tried  the  assassins  of 
Lincoln.  That  duty  done,  he  returned  to 
Crawfordsville. 

This  return  home  signalized  the  real  be 
ginning  of  his  literary  career.  He  was  now 
not  far  from  forty  years  of  age,  and  he  was 
not  content  to  live  on  his  military  reputa 
tion.  Law  had  little  power  over  him.  So 
he  turned  to  the  manuscript  which  had  been 
growing  slowly  for  many  years;  and  1873 
saw  the  publication  of  "The  Fair  God," 
the  souvenir  of  the  author's  service  in  the 
Mexican  war.  Compared  with  the  average 
romance,  "  The  Fair  God"  possesses  excep 
tional  power  and  originality.  "  Ben-Hur" 
appeared  in  1880  ;  but  it  must  not  be  sup 
posed  that  General  Wallace  gave  this  second 
book  his  exclusive  attention  for  the  seven 
years  that  had  passed.  It  was  half  written 
when,  in  1878,  President  Hayes  appointed 
66 


"LEW"  WALLACE 

the  distinguished  Indianian  Governor  of  New 
Mexico.  The  visitor  at  the  Wallace  home 
stead  in  Crawfordsville  will  be  shown  the 
beech  tree  in  the  shade  of  which  the  work 
was  done.  To  the  way  in  which  he  works 
we  shall  turn  later.  The  concluding  half  of 
the  tale  was  written  at  spare  moments  in 
the  governor's  palace  in  Santa  FC*,  which 
Mrs.  Wallace  has  described  as  "the  last 
rallying-place  of  the  Pueblo  Indians." 

At  first  the  more  captious  of  the  critics 
accented  their  discovery  that  "Ben-Hur" 
showed  no  rhetorical  improvement  over 
"  The  Fair  God  ";  and,  though  they  were 
right,  they  erred  sadly  in  trying  to  measure 
the  book  with  narrow  rules.  It  has  defects, 
as  the  most  sympathetic  critic  must  admit ; 
but  the  impartial  critic  must  also  admit 
that  in  boldness  and  grandeur  of  conception 
and  in  vigor  and  beauty  of  style,  the  story 
stands  unequalled  in  American  literature, 

67 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

and,  in  parts,  unexcelled  in  the  romantic 
literature  of  any  nation.  Here  and  there 
are  unbalanced  sentences,  graceless  phrases, 
misplaced  words,  and  interpolations  that 
detract  from  the  unity  of  effect  desirable  in 
all  works  of  art ;  but  here  and  there,  too, 
especially  in  the  chapters  descriptive  of  the 
Grove  of  Daphne  and  of  the  chariot  race,  is 
a  vivid  power  at  once  more  charming  and 
more  thrilling  than  anything  to  be  found  in 
any  other  English  novel.  "  A  great  historical 
romance,"  as  one  of  our  critics  remarked 
many  years  ago,  "  is  not  to  be  made  with 
reference  to  the  square  and  the  compass. 
It  must  be  a  vivid  historical  impression,  and 
at  the  same  time  a  wisely  considered  story 
of  life."  "  Ben-Hur"  adequately  fulfills  these 
two  fundamental  conditions.  Moreover  it 
perfectly  f ulfills,  delicately  yet  impressively, 
the  great  moral  purpose  which  the  author 
imposed  upon  himself.  As  we  recall  the 
68 


"LEW"  WALLACE 

author's  narrative  of  the  writing  of  the  tale, 
this  moral  purpose,  beginning  gently,  grad 
ually  acquired  a  force  that  mastered  him 
completely.  It  was  like  a  flood  that  first 
trickles  through  the  seam  in  the  dam,  and 
then,  gathering  in  volume,  sweeps  all  before 
it.  The  characters  themselves,  from  Christ 
to  the  faithful  steward,  display  the  highest 
flight  of  imagination  to  be  found  in  any 
American  novel.  Indeed,  many  of  the  land 
scape  features  themselves  are  so  wonderfully 
vivid  that  the  same  praise  awarded  Tom 
Moore  for  his  imaginative  descriptions  of 
the  East  may  judiciously  be  extended  to 
General  Wallace.  We  have  heard  the  Gen 
eral  say  that  a  scene  which  he  had  regarded 
as  purely  fictitious  or  imaginative  appeared 
in  surprising  reality  when,  years  after  the 
book  was  published,  he  first  visited  Palestine. 
Of  the  tremendous  sensation  which  "  Ben- 
Hur  "  made  when  it  appeared,  and  of  the 

69 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

phenomenal  success  which  it  has  maintained 
even  down  to  the  present  time,  it  is,  we 
presume,  unnecessary  to  speak.  The  author, 
as  we  noted  before,  has  guarded  its  fame 
diligently,  jealously;  in  fact,  although 
Lawrence  Barrett  urged  him  years  ago  to 
allow  the  book  to  be  dramatized,  he  did  not 
yield  to  solicitation  in  this  form  until  1900. 
This  circumstance  reminds  us  that  the 
General  once  wrote  a  play  called  "  Commo- 
dus,"  but  its  multiplicity  of  leading  char 
acters  has  kept  it  in  his  desk.  It  would 
bankrupt  any  manager  in  America,  they 
told  him.  "  The  Prince  of  India,"  the  ro 
mance  published  in  1893,  suffered,  as  it 
must  have  suffered,  by  comparison  with 
"  Ben-Hur."  Judged  by  itself,  it  is  delight 
ful.  It  exemplifies  the  writer's  remarkable 
creative  force  and  his  ever-youthful  enthu 
siasm.  Probably  the  last  notable  work 
from  the  General's  pen  will  be  the  auto- 
70 


"LEW"  WALLACE 

biography  on  which,  he  has  been  at  work 
for  the  last  few  years. 

General  Wallace's  diplomatic  experience 
at  Constantinople  is  worthy  of  a  chapter, 
but  we  must  content  ourselves  with  saying 
that  it  added  brilliancy  to  the  honors  which 
he  had  earned  as  a  soldier  and  as  an  author. 
Of  late  the  General  has  been  living  a  semi- 
pastoral  life  at  his  estate  in  Indiana.  He 
has  himself  described  his  daily  habits : 

"  I  begin  to  write  at  about  9  A.M.  Keep 
at  work  till  noon.  Resume  about  1.30  P.M., 
and  leave  my  studio  about  4.  I  then  ex 
ercise  for  two  hours.  I  walk  or  ride  horse 
back,  according  to  the  weather.  When  it 
rains  I  put  on  a  heavy  pair  of  boots  and 
trudge  five  to  seven  miles  across  the  coun 
try.  I  usually  ride  about  a  dozen  miles. 
To  this  habit  of  taking  regular  exercise  I 
attribute  my  good  health.  I  eat  just  what 
I  want  and  as  much  as  I  want.  When 

71 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

night  comes  I  lie  down  and  sleep  like  a 
child,  never  once  waking  until  morning.  I 
usually  retire  at  9.30  and  rise  at  7.30,  aim 
ing  to  secure  nine  hours'  sleep.  I  smoke 
at  pleasure,  a  pipe  or  a  cigar,  but  never  a 
cigarette,  which  I  consider  the  deadliest 
thing  a  person  can  put  in  his  mouth.  The 
amount  of  work  I  produce  in  a  day  varies 
greatly.  Sometimes  I  write  four  hundred 
and  sometimes  twelve  hundred  words. 
What  I  write  to-day  in  the  rough,  to-mor 
row  I  revise,  perhaps  reducing  it  to  twenty 
words,  perhaps  striking  out  all  the  day's 
work  and  beginning  at  the  same  point  once 
more.  That  constitutes  my  second  copy. 
When  proofs  come  from  the  publisher 
another  revision  takes  place.  It  consists 
chiefly  of  condensation  and  expurgation." 
He  was  asked  once  what  he  considered 
the  secret  of  his  success.  "  Work,"  he 
answered,  "  and,  as  an  author,  the  doing  it 
72 


"LEW"  WALLACE 

myself  with  my  own  hand,  not  by  means  of 
a  typewriter,  or  amanuensis  or  stenogra 
pher.  To  work  I  would  add  universal 
reading." 

"Who  is  your  favorite  novelist?"  the 
questioner  went  on. 

"  Sir  Walter  Scott." 

"  What  is  your  favorite  novel?  " 

" « Ivanhoe.' " 

"  And  your  favorite  poem  ?  " 

«  *  Idylls  of  the  King.'  " 

"What  do  you  consider  the  sublimest 
poetry  in  the  world?  " 

"  You  will  find  it  in  the  Psalms  and  Job, 
in  Homer,  in  Milton  and  in  Shakespeare." 

"  Who,  in  your  judgment,  are  the  three 
greatest  warriors  the  world  has  produced  ?  " 

"Alexander,  Caesar,  Napoleon." 

"  Who,  in  your  opinion,  were  the  greatest 
American  statesmen  ?  " 

"  George  Washington,  Alexander  Ham- 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

ilton,  and  James  Madison.  Alexander 
Hamilton  is,  in  my  judgment,  the  father  of 
the  American  Constitution.  But  that  Con 
stitution  would  never  have  been  adopted 
save  for  the  support  given  it  by  the  great 
name  of  George  Washington." 

We  have  said,  after  all,  far  too  little 
of  this  distinguished  man,  but  all  that  we 
might  say  would  hardly  give  the  right  em 
phasis  to  the  greatness  of  his  manifold 
deeds  and  to  the  charm  of  his  personal 
character. 


74 


GEORGE    W.    CABLE. 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE 


*y^v  URING  his  visit  to  this  country  a 
I  m  few  years  ago  Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie 
-*--^  said  to  the  students  at  Smith 
College  that  no  American  novelist  merits 
a  higher  rank  than  Mr.  George  W.  Cable. 
True  as,  in  the  abstract,  this  foreign  esti 
mate  of  Mr.  Cable's  worth  is,  it  would 
awaken  a  rather  feeble  echo  among  the 
devourers  of  our  colonial  literature.  Yet  one 
of  the  Southerner's  characteristic  stories, 
44  The  Grandissimes,"  for  instance,  or  "  Pos- 
son  Jone,"  or  "Madame  Delphine,"  is 
deserving  of  a  recommendation  to  the  live 
liest  admirer  of  eighteenth  century  heroes 
and  heroines. 

At  bottom,  there  is  much  in  common  be 
tween  Mr.  Barrie  and  Mr.  Cable,  and  this 

-    75 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

circumstance  may  account  for  the  Scotch 
man's  enthusiastic  utterance  at  Smith  Col 
lege.  Each  has  a  poetical  love  for  nature ; 
each  has  portrayed  a  picturesque  corner  of 
the  world  with  the  kindest  intention,  the 
broadest  sympathy  and  the  choicest  skill ; 
each  has  been  the  object  of  misunderstand 
ing  at  home  and  of  warm  admiration  abroad, 
and  each  has  led  where  others  may  only 
follow.  It  is  perfectly  natural  that  two 
such  lovable  and  loving  men  should  clasp 
hands  across  the  sea. 

We  must  admit  that  the  writer  who  has 
pictured  New  Orleans  as  vividly  as  Balzac 
pictured  his  beloved  Paris  was  better  known, 
say,  ten  years  ago,  than  he  is  to-day.  Then 
he  had  fewer  distractions  than  he  has  to-day. 
Then  he  had  reached  the  climax  of  his  liter 
ary  productivity.  Then  he  was  personally 
endearing  himself  to  his  fellow-countrymen 
with  his  inimitably  delightful  recitations 
76 


GEOKGE  W.  CABLE 

and  songs.  There  have  been  authors  who 
drew  larger  audiences,  and  who,  to  use  a 
homely  phrase,  made  more  noise  on  their 
tours,  but  there  has  never  been  an  author 
whose  readings  from  his  works  gave  sweeter 
pleasure ;  and,  as  for  his  manner  of  singing 
the  Creole  folksongs,  it  was  indescribably 
charming.  Mr.  John  Fox,  Jr.,  is  the  only 
other  American  author  who  has  ventured  to 
sing  folk-songs  publicly ;  and  we  may  say, 
without  fear  of  suggesting  the  odious  com 
parison,  that  the  younger  man  has  been 
very  successful,  too. 

"  Many  years  ago,  "  Mr.  Cable  once  said, 
"  when  I  discovered  that  these  folk-songs  of 
the  slaves  of  former  Louisiana  Creoles  had 
a  great  charm  of  their  own  and  were  pre 
served  by  tradition  only,  I  was  induced  to 
gather  them  and  reduce  them  to  notation. 
I  found  that  others  were  so  strongly  inter 
ested  in  the  songs  that,  without  pretending 

77 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

to  any  musical  authority  or  original  charm 
of  voice,  I  was  tempted  to  sing  one  or  two 
of  them  before  public  audiences.  The  first 
time  I  did  so  was  in  Boston,  and  since  then 
I  have  rarely  been  allowed  to  leave  them 
out  of  my  entertainment,  when  the  length 
of  my  literary  program  left  room  for  them." 
But  we  must  look  back  farther.  To  start 
at  the  very  beginning,  George  Washington 
Cable  was  born  in  New  Orleans  on  October 
12,  1844.  His  father  was  of  Virginian  de 
scent  ;  his  mother  of  New  England.  They 
were  married  in  Indiana  ten  years  before 
George  was  born,  and  they  moved  to  New 
Orleans  after  the  hard  times  of  1837.  The 
father  died  in  1859,  and  then  George,  at 
the  age  of  fifteen,  went  to  work  to  help  sup 
port  the  family.  He  was  a  very  small  boy 
for  his  age ;  and  indeed  it  is  related  that  in 
1863,  when  the  family  was  sent  outside  the 
Union  lines  for  refusing  to  take  the  oath  of 
78 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE 

allegiance,  his  sisters  had  no  difficulty  in 
obtaining  permission  to  have  their  "little 
brother "  accompany  them.  The  "  little 
brother,"  however,  was  not  so  harmless  as 
he  looked.  He  volunteered  to  fight  for  the 
Confederacy,  and  was  mustered  into  the 
Fourth  Mississippi  Cavalry,  then  in  Gen. 
Wirt  Adams's  brigade.  For  a  time  after 
the  war  he  rolled  cotton  on  the  New  Orleans 
levees  and  carried  a  surveyor's  chain  along 
the  banks  of  the  Atchafalaya ;  and  by  and 
by  he  found  a  place  on  the  New  Orleans 
Picayune.  He  is  therefore  to  be  counted 
among  the  authors  whose  literary  career 
started  in  the  reporter's  room.  His  strong 
taste  for  culture  and  his  zeal  for  the  public 
welfare  soon  made  an  outlet  for  themselves 
in  short  articles  touching  on  current  topics  ; 
and,  though  the  articles  were  much  enjoyed 
by  the  readers  of  the  Picayune,  the  young 
writer  before  long  felt  the  distaste  for  news- 

79 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

paper  work  which,  early  or  late,  comes  to 
almost  every  journalist  with  high  literary 
aims.  Journalism  is  the  best  school  of  ex 
perience  in  the  world,  but  it  can  be  attended 
too  long. 

Cable  resisted  the  fascinations  of  journal 
ism  firmly  and  wisely.  At  the  height  of 
his  success  he  left  the  Picayune  and  went 
into  the  counting-room  of  a  cotton  house. 
He  had  a  good  eye  for  the  picturesque  fea 
tures  of  daily  life,  the  features  met  com 
monly  in  the  daily  papers,  and  at  his  leisure 
he  wrote  a  few  short  stories  based  on 
New  Orleans  characters.  One  day  these 
stories,  which  he  had  made  no  attempt  to  sell, 
came  into  the  hands  of  an  agent  of  the  old 
Scribner's  Monthly,  who  happened  to  visit 
Louisiana  in  connection  with  the  well-re 
membered  Great  South  papers.  This  agent, 
by  name  Edward  King,  praised  the  stories, 
and,  at  the  author's  request,  sent  one  of 
80 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE 

them  to  New  York.  The  story,  for  some 
reason,  came  back  ;  but  the  next  one  sent, 
"  Sieur  George,"  brought  a  note  of  accept 
ance  and  encouragement  from  Richard 
Watson  Gilder,  Doctor  Holland's  associate. 
A  few  years  later  a  volume  of  these  Lou 
isiana  sketches  was  published  under  the  title 
of  "  Old  Creole  Days."  It  was  immediately 
recognized  as  a  notable  addition  to  our  short 
story  literature.  Nevertheless,  the  author 
stuck  to  his  desk  in  the  counting-room.  Many 
another  ambitious  young  writer,  in  the  cir 
cumstances,  would  have  given  up  his  position 
and  leaned  entirely  upon  his  pen.  Young 
Cable  had  a  cool  head.  He  knew  that  he 
was  moving  forward  handsomely,  and  that 
if  he  yielded  to  the  excitement  of  the  situ 
ation  for  a  moment  he  might  fall  back.  So 
his  pen  rusted  for  two  years,  when  he  ac 
cepted  an  order  for  a  serial  story.  This 
turned  out  to  be  "  The  Grandissimes,"  a 

81 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

clear  and  entertaining  exposition  of  the 
author's  views  of  the  old-fashioned  Southern 
life,  a  happy  mingling  of  fact  and  fiction, 
of  fun  and  sobriety,  of  calm  appreciation  of 
the  Louisiana  aristocracy  and  a  warm  toler 
ation  of  the  struggles  of  the  poor  negro 
slaves.  Of  course,  this  attitude  added  noth 
ing  to  the  author's  popularity  among  South 
erners. 

To  illustrate  this,  a  Southern  woman, 
who  happened  to  visit  Northampton,  where 
of  late  Mr.  Cable  has  made  his  home,  was 
asked  if  she  ever  read  his  stories.  "  Of  course 
not,"  she  indignantly  answered ;  "  I  would 
n't  think  of  looking  at  them."  However, 
she  was  persuaded  to  look  at  them  after  a 
while ;  and  it  is  a  peculiar  tribute  to  their 
delicate  yet  powerful  charm  that  the  woman 
expressed  regret  that  she  had  misconceived 
his  work  and  opposed  his  ideas. 

"The  Grandissimes"  was  so  successful 
82 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE 

that  the  publishers  are  said  to  have  sent  the 
author  a  check  for  five  hundred  dollars  more 
than  the  contract  price.  This  first  long  tale 
was  followed  by  another  much  the  same  in 
vein  and  in  atmosphere,  "Madame  Del- 
phine,"  which  is  the  story-teller's  own  favor 
ite.  The  subject  and  the  style  are  equally 
delightful. 

In  1879,  when  Mr.  Cable  was  thirty-five 
years  old,  the  business  house  in  which  he 
had  worked  to  keep  his  feet  on  earth  dis 
solved,  and  the  clerk  had  to  choose  between 
returning  to  journalism  and  devoting  him 
self  entirely  to  literature.  By  this  time  he 
seems  to  have  been  more  self-reliant  and 
more  confident.  At  any  rate,  he  chose  lit 
erature.  The  first  thing  he  did  was  to  decline 
to  write  for  more  than  one  publisher.  It 
must  be  said  again  that  a  steadier  head  never 
produced  a  story. 

A  strong  sense  of  duty,  in  fact,  early  es- 

83 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

tablished  control  of  his  work.  His  interests 
were  not  permitted  to  grow  narrow.  He 
realized  that  he  possessed  exceptionally 
abundant  resources  for  the  production  of 
miscellaneous  literature  touching  on  the 
development  of  the  middle  South,  and  he 
determined  to  make  the  most  of  his  posses 
sions.  In  1880,  for  example,  we  find  him 
engaged  in  a  special  article  on  New  Orleans 
for  the  Census  Bureau,  and  his  native  city 
was  also  the  theme  of  an  article  which  he 
wrote  for  the  "  Encyclopedia  Britannica." 
One  of  his  critics  has  said:  "Since  Haw 
thorne's  Custom  House  reports,  few  pages  of 
the  Government  documents  have  been  en 
riched  by  so  discriminating  a  pen  as  in  the 
exhaustive  census  monograph  upon  the  past 
and  present  of  the  Southern  metropolis." 
This  paper  led  to  a  series  of  articles  entitled 
"  The  Creoles  of  Louisiana,"  written  for  The 
Century,  in  which  the  reader  will  note  an 
84 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE 

artistic    combination    of    dry   history    and 
vivid  imagination. 

That  such  a  painstaking,  conscientious,  du 
tiful  writer  should  ever  be  charged  with  fall 
ing  into  an  anachronism  may  seem  preposter 
ous;  but  although  the  charge  has  been  made, 
we  find  no  instance  in  which  it  has  been  sus 
tained.  A  writer  who  once  visited  him 
brushed  the  charge  aside  vigorously  :  "  Mr. 
Cable's  plan  of  work,"  he  said,  "  is  unusually 
methodical,  for  his  counting-room  training 
has  stood  him  in  good  stead.  All  his  notes  and 
references  are  carefully  indexed  and  jour- 
nailed,  and  so  systematized  that  he  can  turn, 
without  a  moment's  delay,  to  any  authority 
he  wishes  to  consult.  In  this  respect,  as  in 
many  others,  he  has  not,  perhaps,  his  equal 
among  living  authors.  In  making  his  notes, 
it  is  his  usual  custom  to  write  in  pencil  on 
scraps  of  paper.  These  notes  are  next  put 
into  shape,  still  in  pencil,  and  the  third 

85 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

copy,  intended  for  the  press,  is  written  in 
ink  on  note-paper — the  chirography  exceed 
ingly  neat,  delicate  and  legible.  He  is 
always  exact,  and  is  untiring  in  his  re 
searches  ....  Before  attempting  to  write 
upon  any  historical  point,  he  gathers  to 
gether  all  available  material  without  reck 
oning  time  or  trouble  ;  and,  under  such 
conditions,  nothing  is  more  unlikely  than 
that  he  should  be  guilty  of  error." 

The  business  life  which  fortunately  im 
posed  so  valuable  a  system  upon  him  inci 
dentally  inspired  his  second  novel,  "  Dr. 
Sevier,"  many  of  the  scenes  in  which  are 
faithful  pictures  of  his  own  experiences  as 
a  youth.  As  in  the  historical  sketches,  so 
in  this  second  novel  the  poetic  imagination 
of  the  author  fairly  rivals  his  grasp  of  the 
prosaic  relations  existing  between  man  and 
man.  But  such  relations  were  supremely 
vital  from  his  viewpoint,  and  his  third  novel, 
86 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE 

"  Bonaventure,"  was  written  in  moments 
stolen  from  the  discussion  of  the  questions 
of  elections,  prison  systems,  and  the  future 
of  the  negro.  The  reader  will  note  in  the 
hero  of  this  story  the  personification  of  the 
practical  strengthening  and  yet  spiritualiz 
ing  gospel  which  the  author  has  enunciated 
in  his  private  and  public  religious  work. 
For  it  is  important  to  chronicle  that  Mr. 
Cable  has  done  as  much  to  Christianize  sev* 
eral  communities  as  the  most  energetic  min 
ister  would  be  expected  to  do  ;  and  from  his 
scrupulous  performance  of  not  merely  the 
ordinary  Christian  duties  but  also  of  duties 
self-imposed,  he  has  never  allowed  literature 
or  society  to  beguile  him. 

Naturally  his  social  and  political  studies 
drew  many  invitations  to  address  public 
meetings.  It  was  at  Johns  Hopkins  Uni 
versity,  while  lecturing  on  literary  art,  that, 
upon  the  suggestion  of  President  Gilman, 

87 


LITTLE  PILGEIMAGES 

he  ventured  for  the  first  time  to  read  selec 
tions  from  his  own  stories.  The  delight  of 
the  audience  was  no  less  a  surprise  to  him 
than  the  realization  of  his  own  elocutionary 
skill.  This  he  set  about  to  cultivate,  and 
with  such  success  that  for  years  afterward 
he  was  enthusiastically  welcomed  to  the 
great  cities.  It  was  once  estimated  that 
in  his  busiest  years  on  the  platform  he 
traveled  more  than  ten  thousand  miles  every 
twelve  months. 

For  various  reasons,  particularly  that  he 
might  be  able  to  write  of  the  South  impar 
tially  and  that  he  might  be  nearer  the  liter 
ary  market,  he  moved  to  Simsbury,  Conn., 
in  1884,  and  the  next  year  to  Northampton, 
Mass.,  where  he  has  lived  ever  since.  But 
he  has  never  lost  sight  of  his  native  concern 
in  the  progress  of  the  South ;  and  as  for  his 
philanthropy,  in  Northampton  it  has  spread 
wider  and  wider. 
88 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE 

There,  on  the  edge  of  one  of  the  quietest 
and  loveliest  towns  in  Massachusetts,  he  has 
had  built  for  himself  a  home  suited  to  all  his 
excellent  tastes,  and  there  he  lives,  intent 
always  on  making  someone  happy,  and  writ 
ing  simply  enough  to  maintain  the  brilliancy 
and  popularity  of  his  name. 


89 


HENRY  JAMES 


TT  ^ENRY    JAMES     has   been    at 

m     i    pains,  lately,  to  put  a  stop  to  a 

report  that  he  proposes  to  return 

to  America,  yet  by  descent  and  at  heart  he 

is  undoubtedly  as  loyal  an  American  as  his 

neighbor  in  England,  Bret  Harte.     Even 

a  cosmopolite  may  be  patriotic. 

Mr.  James  has  been  called  the  first 
American  cosmopolitan  author.  It  is  an  un 
usually  interesting  fact  that,  like  Mr.  Harte, 
who  also  lives  in  England,  James  was  born 
in  Albany,  N.  Y.,  the  date  of  his  birth  being 
April  15, 1843.  His  grandfather,  William 
James,  who  made  a  fortune  in  the  Syracuse 
salt  works,  had  settled  in  Albany  soon  after 
his  immigration  from  Ireland.  His  millions 
were  divided  among  eleven  children,  one  of 

91 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

whom  was  Henry  James,  Sr.,  the  novelist's 
father.  This  branch  of  the  James  family 
moved  to  Germany  when  our  author  was  a 
boy ;  and  there  he  and  his  brothers  and 
sister  were  educated  for  some  years.  It  used  to 
be  said  that,  like  his  distinguished  contempo 
raries,  Howells  and  Aldrich,  James  never  en 
joyed  the  advantages  of  a  college  education  ; 
but  it  is  a  fact,  nevertheless,  that  the  James 
children  were  thoroughly  educated.  Henry 
James,  Sr.,  intellectually,  was  a  remarkable 
man,  and  Miss  Walsh  of  New  York,  whom 
he  married,  has  been  described  as  "  his  com 
plement  in  the  possession  of  sterling  practi 
cal  qualities  and  the  sustaining  common  sense 
of  woman."  Besides,  there  were  the  educa 
tional  advantages  of  travel  which  the  James 
children  enjoyed.  When  the  Jameses  re 
turned  to  this  country  they  settled  in  Cam 
bridge.  It  was  there  that  Howells  made  the 
acquaintance  of  the  elder  James. 
92 


HENRY  JAMES 


We  are  tempted  to  quote  extensively 
from  Howells's  memories  of  Henry  James, 
Sr.,  but  we  shall  confine  our  quotation  to  a 
single  paragraph: 

"At  all  times  he  thought  originally  in 
words  of  delightful  originality,  which  painted 
a  fact  with  the  greatest  vividness.  Of  a 
person  who  had  a  nervous  twitching  of  the 
face,  and  who  wished  to  call  up  a  friend  to 
them,  he  said :  4  He  spasmed  to  the  fellow 
across  the  room,  and  introduced  him.'  His 
written  style  had  traits  of  the  same  adven- 
turousness,  but  it  was  his  speech  which  was 
most  captivating.  As  I  write  of  him  I  see 
him  before  me :  his  white  bearded  face, 
with  a  kindly  intensity  which  at  first  glance 
seemed  fierce,  the  mouth  humorously  shap 
ing  the  mustache,  the  eyes  vague  behind 
the  glasses  ;  his  sensitive  hand  gripping  the 
stick  on  which  he  rested  his  weight  to  ease 
it  from  the  artificial  limb  he  wore." 

93 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Henry  James,  Jr.,  is  one  of  five  children. 
Equally  as  celebrated  as  Henry,  both  at 
home  and  abroad,  is  William  James,  a  pro 
fessor  at  Harvard.  In  March,  1865,  a  month 
before  his  twenty-second  year,  Henry  James 
made  his  first  appearance  in  literature  with 
a  contribution  to  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  en 
titled  "  A  Story  of  a  Year,"  which  naturally 
had  to  do  with  the  War  of  the  Rebellion. 
It  was  The  Atlantic  which  also  published  his 
first  serial  story,  "  Poor  Richard,"  which 
ran  through  three  numbers.  Later  followed 
"Gabrielle  de  Bergerac"  and  "  Watch  and 
Ward,"  each  a  little  more  ambitious  than 
its  predecessors ;  and  finally  came  his  first 
long  story,  "  Roderick  Hudson,"  which 
lasted  through  twelve  numbers  of  The 
A  tlantic.  The  stories  aroused  a  great  deal 
of  comment,  most  of  which  was  favorable. 
This  encouraged  him  to  abandon  all  thought 
of  law,  which  he  had  studied  at  Harvard, 
94 


HENRY  JAMES 


and  make  literature  his  profession.  About 
the  same  time  he  went  to  England,  where 
he  has  since  spent  most  of  his  time. 

Like  Harte,  James  has  suffered  from  the 
charge  of  expatriation.  The  very  fact  that 
the  English  reading  public,  which  is  a  most 
discerning  public,  was  quick  to  appreciate 
the  rare  quality  of  James's  style  has  been 
sufficient  to  keep  some  American  critics  in 
bad  temper  —  as  if  the  mere  matter  of  resi 
dence  has  any  intimate  connection  with 
literature !  If  James  were  an  utter  snob, 
if  he  slurred  Americans  or  disclaimed  any 
acquaintance  with  them,  if  his  cynicism 
were  not  well  founded,  or  if  his  satire  were 
simply  burlesque,  he  might  justly  be  at 
tacked  ;  but  as,  personally,  he  is  gentle  and 
unassuming,  as  his  cynicism  is  not  a  mania, 
and  as  his  satire  is  more  or  less  truthful, 
the  belligerent  critics  have  been  largely 
wasting  their  ammunition.  Probably  no 

95 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

story  of  his  has  ever  stirred  up  bitterer  talk 
than  "  Daisy  Miller,"  with  its  unconven 
tional  American  heroine  ;  yet  it  was  only 
justice,  not  to  mention  literary  acumen, 
which  prompted  so  spirited  an  American  as 
Col.  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  in  his 
44  Short  Studies  of  American  Authors," 
to  say  of  the  author  of  44  Daisy  Miller  "  that 
44  he  has  achieved  no  greater  triumph  than 
when,  in  this  last-named  book,  he  succeeds 
in  holding  our  sympathy  and  even  affec 
tion,  after  all,  for  the  essential  innocence 
and  rectitude  of  the  poor  wayward  girl 
whose  follies  he  has  so  mercilessly  por 
trayed."  It  is  a  singular  commentary  on 
the  injustice  of  the  denouncers  of  "  Daisy 
Miller"  that  the  young  lady  of  Boston 
whom  gossip  made  the  original  of  the  story 
was  44cut"  by  society. 

His  friends  and  enemies  were  still  further 
divided  by  44  The  American "    and    44  The 
96 


HENRY  JAMES 


Portrait  of  a  Lady,"  and  we  suspect  that 
the  author  was  poking  a  little  fun  at  the 
hostile  canip  when  he  had  the  American 
woman  journalist  in  the  latter  story  say,  "  I 
was  going  to  bring  in  your  cousin — the 
alienated  American.  There  is  a  great 
demand  now  for  the  alienated  American, 
and  your  cousin  is  a  beautiful  specimen.  I 
should  have  handled  him  severely." 

Mr.  James's  friends  say  that  he  went  to 
England,  originally,  for  the  benefit  of  his 
health.  It  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  he  has 
a  temperament  which  makes  itself  at  home 
in  all  lands.  He  is,  indeed,  as  much  a 
citizen  of  Paris  as  of  London,  and  his 
stories  in  French  have  been  warmly  praised 
by  French  critics.  But  it  may  be  that, 
after  all,  he  saw  the  wisdom  of  writing 
reminiscently,  of  writing  at  a  distance  from 
his  subjects.  Mr.  Cable,  for  example,  saw 
it  when  he  moved  North  from  New  Orle- 

97 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

ans  ;  and,  furthermore,  we  know  that  many 
an  author  has  been  condemned  unjustly  for 
telling  the  truth.  The  great  novelist  is  not 
the  idealist,  with  his  world  of  prize-baby 
angels  and  impossible  saints ;  he  is  a  photog 
rapher,  and  his  mind  and  his  hand  are  a 
camera  that  cannot  lie.  Mr.  Warner  once 
said  that  the  object  of  the  novel  is  to  en 
tertain  ;  Mr.  James  has  said  that  it  is  to 
represent  life.  James  Lane  Allen,  we 
remember,  joined  the  two  statements  thus  : 
"  The  object  of  the  novel  is  to  entertain  by 
representing  life." 

James's  reach  is  transatlantic.  Ameri 
cans  and  Britons  alike  share  prominence  in 
his  works.  Then,  too,  of  late,  his  charac 
ters  have  grown  more  and  more  ethereal 
and  ghostly ;  they  have  such  faint  connec 
tion  with  the  world  of  chalk-cliffs  and 
prairies  that  the  question  of  their  citizen 
ship  is  insignificant.  Physically  they  ap- 
98 


HENEY  JAMES 


pear  to  us  only  in  episodes ;  intellectually 
they  are  universal  types.  But,  really,  the 
last  word  on  Henry  James's  art  was  said 
long  ago  by  The  Spectator  : 

"  Mr.  Henry  James  is  certainly  a  very 
remarkable  illustration  of  the  tendency  of 
our  age  to  subdivide,  in  the  finest  way,  the 
already  rather  extreme  division  of  labor, 
till  a  very  high  perfection  is  attained  in 
producing  articles  of  the  most  curiously 
specialized  kind,  though  apparently  without 
the  power  of  producing  anything  outside 
that  kind.  For  a  long  time  we  have  had 
novelists  who  are  wonderfully  skillful  in  a 
particular  form  of  novels,  but  who  seem 
unable  to  master  more  than  one  form  for 
themselves.  But  Mr.  Henry  James,  though 
he  has  attained  a  very  great  perfection  in 
his  own  line,  seems  not  to  aim  at  anything 
quite  so  considerable  as  a  story  of  human 
life  of  any  sort.  He  eschews  a  story. 

99 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

What  he  loves  is  an  episode,  i.  e.,  some 
thing  which  by  the  nature  of  the  case  is 
rather  a  fragment  cut  out  of  life,  and  not  a 
fair  or  average  specimen  of  it,  nor  even  such 
a  part  of  it  as  would  give  you  the  best 
essence  of  the  whole, —  but  rather  an  eddy 
in  it,  which  takes  you  for  an  interval  out 
of  its  main  current,  and  only  ends  as  you 
get  back  into  the  main  current  again,  or  at 
least  at  the  point  at  which  you  might  get 
back  into  the  main  current  again,  if  some 
event  (accidental,  in  relation  to  the  art  of 
the  story)  did  not  occur  to  cut  off  abruptly 
the  thread  of  the  narrative.  .  .  One  might 
perhaps  say  that  Mr.  Henry  James  has 
discerned  in  relation  to  literature  what  has 
long  been  known  in  relation  to  art  —  that 
with  artists  of  any  genius,  *  sketches  '  are 
apt  to  be  more  satisfying  than  finished 
pictures.  But  then  the  sketches  we  like 
so  much  in  artists'  studios  are,  though  un- 
100 


HENRY  JAMES 


finished  pictures,  still  pictures  of  what  the 
painter  has  been  most  struck  with,  pictures 
in  which  he  has  given  all  that  struck  him 
most,  and  left  only  what  did  not  strike  him 
to  be  filled  in  by  the  fancy  of  the  public. 
Now,  Mr.  Henry  James  does  not  give  us 
sketches  of  the  most  striking  features  in 
what  he  sees  of  human  life  and  passion,  so 
much  as  finished  pictures  of  the  little  nooks 
and  bays  into  which  human  caprice  occa 
sionally  drifts,  when  the  main  current  of 
life's  deeper  interests  has  left  us  for  a 
moment  on  one  side,  and  rushed  past  us. . . 
Mr.  Henry  James  is  not  so  much  a  novel 
ist  as  an  episodist,  if  such  a  term  be 
allowable.  But  he  is  a  wonderful  episo 
dist." 

All  in  all,  that  is  the  keenest  and  fairest 
criticism  of  James's  works  ever  written.  It 
should  be  taken  with  every  one  of  his 
stories,  just  as  soda  is  taken  with  brandy. 

101 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Such  a  criticism    is  not  fugacious ;  it  is 
complementary. 

It  brings  to  mind  the  amusing  criti 
cism  of  "The  Sacred  Fount,"  notably 
Carolyn  Wells's  "  Verbarium  Tremens," 
published  in  The  Critic^  with  its  bright 
termination  — 

The  mad  gush   of  "  The  Sacred  Fount "  is 

ringing  in  my  ear, 
Its  dictional  excitements  are  obsessing  me,  I 

fear. 
For  its  subtle  fascination  makes  me  read  it, 

then,  alack, 
I  find  I  have  the  James- James,  a  very  bad 

attack ! 

James  is  an  exceedingly  neat  man,  and 
this  side  of  him  at  once  strikes  every  visi 
tor  to  his  home.  The  only  known  excep 
tion  to  this  characteristic  neatness  is  his 
handwriting,  which  is  said  to  be  as  vexa 
tious  as  Horace  Greeley's  was.  "  I  have  a 
letter  from  him  before  me  now,  "says  one  of 
102 


HENRY  JAMES 


his  correspondents.  "  The  signature  I 
know  to  be  *  Henry  James.'  You  might 
take  it  for  Henryk  Sienkiewicz." 

The  same  correspondent  relates  a  story 
which  throws  a  new  light  on  his  personal- 
ity: 

"  You  will  be  astonished,  possibly,  to 
know  that  his  income  from  his  writing  is 
a  scant  three  hundred  pounds  a  year, 
though  in  spite  of  this  there  has  never 
come  a  man  in  need  to  Henry  James  to 
whom  he  has  not  offered  a  part  of  what  he 
calls  his  own. 

"  Not  so  long  ago  a  novelist  in  England 
died.  He  left  two  little  children,  abso 
lutely  alone  in  the  world.  One  of  that 
man's  friends  put  by  a  little  sum  for  them, 
and,  out  of  the  kindness  of  his  heart,  wrote 
to  other  literary  men  soliciting  their  help. 
He  sought  a  maker  of  books  who  lives  in  a 
castle  .  .  .  ,  whom  he  knew  to  have  an 

103 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

income  of  over  twenty  thousand  pounds 
from  his  literary  work. 

"  '  Won't  you  aid  these  little  folk  ? '  he 
asked.  Not  a  cent  was  forthcoming. 

"  Henry  James  was  written  in  the  mat 
ter.  By  return  mail  came  a  check  for  fifty 
pounds,  one-tenth  of  his  whole  year's 
income." 

We  have  been  informed  that  this  esti 
mate  of  Mr.  James's  income  is  rather  small ; 
but,  even  if  his  income  be  as  large  as  that 
of  the  "maker  of  books  who  lives  in  a 
castle,"  the  fact  remains  that  Mr.  James 
proved  his  generosity  handsomely. 

James  has  acquired  his  extraordinarily 
brilliant  style  at  the  expense  of  incessant 
and  determined  effort.  The  dazzling  spon 
taneities  are  really  the  product  of  toilsome 
hours.  He  works  mostly  in  the  morning, 
writing  slowly,  and  his  stories  are  written 
again  and  again  before  they  go  off  to  his 
104 


HENRY  JAMES 


publisher's.  With  him  writing  is  a  pro 
fession,  a  task ;  he  is  not  the  child  of 
moods.  Occasionally  he  visits  friends  — 
old  friends,  like  Marion  Crawford  —  but 
the  greater  part  of  the  year  he  spends 
quietly  and  almost  reclusely  in  England. 


105 


Photo  bj  Parker,  Morristown. 
FRANCIS 


RICHARD    STOCKTON. 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 


a  dinner  given  in  honour  of 
Mr.  Frank  E.  Stockton  by  the 
Author's  Club  of  New  York, 
early  in  the  year  1901,  Mr.  Kichard 
Watson  Gilder,  the  Editor  of  The,  Century, 
is  reported  to  have  told  the  following 
story:  "A  young  man  once  came  to  me 
and  said  that  he  would  like  to  contribute  to 
The  Century  every  month.  I  asked  him 
what  he  wanted  to  write.  '  Oh,'  he  said, 
'I'd  like  to  send  you  each  month  a  story 
like  "The  Lady  or  the  Tiger?"'"  Mr. 
Gilder,  we  are  told,  said  at  the  end  of  his 
speech  that  night:  "When  I  think  of  the 
immense  amount  of  pleasure  Mr.  Stockton 
brought  into  the  life  of  Stevenson  it  seems 

107 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

to  me  that  alone  would  be  to  him  a  bene 
diction  forever." 

The  Editor  of  The  Century  thus  happily 
illustrated  the  attitude  of  the  reading  world 
toward  Mr.  Stockton:  on  one  side  is  an 
eager  desire  to  emulate  him,  and  on  the 
other  an  equally  eager  desire  to  go  to  him 
for  pleasure  or  for  comfort.  There  is  a 
natural  grace  about  his  stories  which  has 
often  deceived  the  inexpert  into  an  attempt 
to  rival  Mm,  while  the  sweet  and  simple 
comedy  of  the  stories  has  for  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century  been  the  delight  of 
young  and  old.  The  young  man  who  visited 
Mr.  Gilder,  and  the  brilliant  novelist  solac 
ing  himself  with  the  acquaintance  of  Po 
mona,  Ardis  Claverden,  Mrs.  Null,  and 
Chipperton,  are  types. 

The  object  of  this  variety  of  admiration 
was  born  in  Philadelphia  on  April  5,  1834. 
He  belongs  to  the  Stockton  family  of  New 
108 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 

Jersey,  but  not,  he  has  informed  us,  to  the 
Princeton  branch.  His  father,  William  S. 
Stockton,  was  a  well-known  writer  on 
church  government. 

On  the  matter  of  his  ancestry  Mr.  Stock 
ton  has  given  us  this  interesting  informa 
tion  :  "  The  ancestor  of  the  Stockton  family 
in  New  Jersey  came  from  Flushing,  L.  L, 
in  1690,  and  purchased  a  tract  of  several 
thousand  acres,  to  which  he  gave  the  In 
dian  name  of  Oneanickon.  His  oldest  son, 
Eichard,  did  not  settle  here,  but  went  to 
Stony  Brook,  afterward  Princeton,  where  he 
founded  that  illustrious  line  of  Stocktons, 
among  whom  were  the  signer  of  the  Decla 
ration  of  Independence,  and  Commodore 
Stockton,  to  whom  this  country  owes,  in 
great  part,  the  possession  of  California,  and 
to  whom  the  negro  race  owes  Liberia.  My 
ancestor  was  the  second  son,  John  Stockton, 
and  his  descendants,  like  himself,  were  gen- 

109 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

erally  yeomen,  or  farmers;  but  they  re 
mained  true  to  Oneanickon,  and  that  estate, 
shorn  of  many  of  its  acres,  but  still  contain 
ing  the  site  of  the  old  homestead  of  Eichard 
and  Abigail  Stockton,  now  remains  in  the 
possession  of  my  branch  of  the  family, 
where  it  has  been  for  211  years,  a  pretty 
long  stretch  for  America." 

The  story-writer's  father  married  twice, 
and  his  second  wife  was  the  mother  of 
Francis  Eichard.  She  was  a  Virginian,  and 
from  her  side  of  the  family  tree  was  derived 
the  name  Ardis  found  in  "  Ardis  Claverden." 
There  is  a  Stocktonian  touch  in  the  familiar 
story  that  the  author's  Christian  name  was 
imposed  upon  him  by  one  of  his  half-sisters, 
who  borrowed  a  part  of  it  from  Francis  L  of 
France  and  a  part  from  Eichard  Coeur  de 
lion.  The  same  relative  gave  Francis's 
sister  the  full  name  of  Napoleon's  second 
wife.  Strange  to  say,  Mr.  Stockton  has 
110 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 

avowed  a  difficulty  in  giving  his  characters 
names. 

The  boy  first  was  sent  to  a  private  school 
in  West  Philadelphia.  Later  he  attended 
the  public  schools,  and  at  the  age  of  eighteen 
was  graduated  from  the  Central  High  School 
with  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts.  It 
was  noticed  at  school  that  his  bent  was  to 
literature.  In  fact,  this  was  obvious  to  his 
parents  when  he  was  only  ten,  for  at  that 
age  he  began  to  scribble  verses.  In  spite  of 
this  proclivity,  however,  Francis,  after  leav 
ing  the  high  school,  took  up  engraving  as  a 
profession.  Just  one  bond  was  left  existing 
between  himself  and  the  world  of  letters, 
and  that  was  his  membership  in  an  organiza 
tion  of  young  men  called  the  "  Forensic  and 
Literary  Circle."  Upon  this  slight  basis  has 
been  erected  an  exceptionally  successful 
career,  for  it  was  to  the  Circle  that  the 
"  Ting-a-ling  Stories  "  were  first  read.  The 

111 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Circle  also  heard  "  Kate  "  as  soon  as  it  was 
written.  This  tale  and  "The  Story  of 
Champaigne  "  were  published  by  the  Southern 
Messenger  ;  and  it  is  sufficient  to  relate  that 
they  created  a  demand  for  more  like  them. 
Thereafter,  until  1874,  Stockton  wrote  many 
short  stories,  his  star  all  the  time  rising  a 
little  higher  above  the  horizon. 

But  in  1874  the  star  blazed  forth  won- 
drously  with  the  appearance  of  the  first  part 
of  "Kudder  Grange."  From  that  day  the 
author's  place  among  the  foremost  American 
humorists  has  been  secure.  "  Kudder 
Grange"  is  undoubtedly  his  most  popular 
work,  for  it  is  in  demand  even  at  this  late 
day.  We  have  heard  it  said  that  among 
many  of  Mr.  Stockton's  admirers  —  and 
who,  by  the  way,  would  attempt  to  number 
those  happy  beings  ?  —  it  is  regarded  as  his 
masterpiece.  We  shall  let  the  statement 
pass  without  examination,  believing  as  we 
112 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 

do  that  in  this  case  comparisons  would  be 
particularly  odious.  However,  it  is  no  back 
handed  compliment  to  say  that  upon  the 
profusion  and  the  quaintness  of  the  humour 
of  "Kudder  Grange"  the  author  has  never 
improved. 

Meantime,  we  should  say  here,  the  young 
Pennsylvanian  had  definitely  adopted  liter 
ature  as  a  profession.  He  had  served  an 
apprenticeship  on  the  Philadelphia  Morning 
Post ;  later  he  had  joined  Edward  Eggleston 
on  Hearth  and  Home  ;  then  he  had  become 
a  member  of  the  editorial  staff  of  Scribner's 
Monthly.  It  was  while  occupying  this  last 
position  that  he  wrote  "Kudder  Grange." 
Afterward  he  cast  his  lot  with  the  editors 
of  St.  Nicholas.  In  1880,  determining  to 
devote  his  time  entirely  to  story-writing, 
he  abandoned  editorial  work  for  good  and 
all. 

Even  more  remarkable  than  the  success 

113 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

of  "Kudder  Grange"  was  the  success  of 
"  The  Lady  or  the  Tiger  ? "  How  the  read 
ing  public  has  pondered  that  cunningly 
made  mystery !  How  it  has  written  and 
talked  about  it !  Truly  it  has  been  —  and 
is  to-day,  indeed  —  one  of  the  nine  wonders 
of  the  literary  world !  It  still  is  unsolved. 
Mr.  Stockton  himself  cannot,  or  perhaps 
will  not,  offer  any  solution.  So  much  has 
been  said  of  the  puzzle  that  doubtless  by 
this  time  the  subject  is  distasteful  to  him. 
He  has  declared  repeatedly  that  he  does 
not  know  whether  the  Lady  or  the  Tiger  — . 
But  there!  We  are  raking  a  fire  that 
perhaps  had  better  be  allowed  to  go  out. 
Just  for  the  sake  of  history  we  will  add 
that  a  comic  opera  based  on  the  story  was 
produced  in  1889. 

During  the  last  twenty  years  Mr.  Stock 
ton  has  written  the  stories  that  make  up 
the  greater  part  of  the  familiar  Shenandoah 
114 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 

edition.  He  always  dictates  his  manuscript 
for  publication,  and  he  does  his  work  in  the 
morning.  In  the  early  days  he  dictated  to 
his  wife,  who  was  Miss  Marian  E.  Tuttle, 
of  Amelia  County,  Virginia ;  but  in  recent 
years  he  has  employed  a  stenographer.  We 
have  seen  the  statement  that  when  the 
author  has  his  subject  well  in  mind  he 
delivers  fifteen  hundred  words  before  the 
morning  is  over. 

A  few  years  ago  Stockton  moved  from 
Convent  Station,  New  Jersey,  to  Charles 
Town,  Jefferson  County,  West  Virginia. 
The  estate,  named  Claymont,  embraces  one 
hundred  and  fifty  acres,  and  it  was  once  a 
part  of  a  large  estate  owned  by  Washing 
ton.  There  the  author  spends  the  pleasant 
seasons  of  the  year,  taking  his  vacation  in 
the  winter. 

In  answer  to  a  question  as  to  his  recre 
ations,  the  famous  humorist  has  informed 

115 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

us:  "I  generally  spend  my  afternoons  out- 
of-doors,  and  my  recreation  is  driving  — 
doing  the  driving  myself.  For  a  good  many 
years  I  have  driven  every  afternoon.  I 
lately  calculated  (the  date  of  his  letter  is 
Dec.  4,  1901)  that  in  the  eight  months  I 
usually  spend  in  the  country  I  have  driven 
as  many  miles  as  would  take  me  across  the 
continent.  Wherever  I  am  I  explore  every 
road  within  a  radius  of  a  dozen  miles  or 
more.  My  mare,  Kitty,  used  to  be  my 
traveling  companion,  but  now  Kitty  is  old 
and  I  drive  a  pair  of  younger  animals. 
But  in  wandering  through  the  fields  and 
woods  Kitty  still  goes  with  me,  caring  no 
more  for  roads  and  regular  ways  than  a 
poet  does  for  the  market  reports.  My  wife 
and  I  are  very  fond  of  the  country,  and  in 
all  our  married  life,  except  for  one  month 
when  we  hired  a  furnished  house  in  Wash 
ington,  we  have  never  kept  house  in  a  city. 
116 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 

"  I  am  not  a  farmer,  but  I  have  a  farm, 
and  it  is  a  great  pleasure  to  me  to  overlook 
its  operations;  but  I  have  inherited  from 
my  ancestors  a  great  love  of  gardening,  and 
to  my  garden  of  two  acres  and  a  half  I  give 
my  special  attention.  Under  my  study 
windows  I  also  have  a  little  walled  garden, 
thirty  feet  square,  which  is  crowded  with 
flowers  from  the  tulip  season  to  the  days 
of  the  hardy  marigold  and  the  enduring 
cosmos.  I  very  much  enjoy  the  woods 
and  fields  about  my  present  home. 

"  I  used  to  be  an  enthusiastic  fisherman, 
and  have  fished  for  many  years  in  many 
waters,  but  of  late  I  have  not  lived  near 
any  suitable  stream  or  body  of  water,  and 
in  my  outdoor  hours  I  prefer  the  whip  to 
the  rod." 

In  appearance  Mr.  Stockton  is  small  and 
spare^  with  partly  white  hair.  At  first 
gla»ce  he  might  be  taken  for  a  sad  man, 

117 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

and  judging  by  his  portrait  one  would 
hardly  associate  him  with  humor  —  ah! 
and  such  quaint,  original  humor.  That  is 
the  author  in  repose.  Animated,  he  is  an 
other  man.  "The  big,  dark  eyes,  full  of 
patient,  weary  expression,  are  luminous," 
says  one  who  knew  him  years  ago;  "the 
mouth,  close  and  discouraged,  expands  into 
smiling  curves,  sweet  and  sympathetic ;  the 
whole  soul  is  in  the  face,  and,  from  head 
to  foot,  Frank  Stockton  is  the  genial,  re 
sponsive  man.  It  is  like  a  brilliant  burst 
of  sunshine  following  a  cloud,  suddenly  and 
unexpectedly,  and  therefore  more  delicious 
in  surprise  and  beauty." 

No  one,  it  is  said,  by  the  way,  has  ever 
heard  Stockton  laugh,  but  he  is  reputed  to 
be  a  "  beautiful  smiler." 

Mr.  George  Gary  Eggleston  once  spoke 
of  the  author  of  "  Kudder  Grange  "  as  "  the 
greatest  story-teller  America  has  ever  pro- 
118 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 

duced."  Certainly  America  has  produced 
no  more  delightful  or  more  original  humor 
ist.  He  has  given  an  immense  amount  of 
pleasure  to  the  young  and  to  the  old.  Now 
the  critic  is  constrained  to  acclaim  him  as 
a  spring  of  purest  humor,  and  again  to 
question  whether  he  is  not  an  incomparable 
spinner  of  fairy-tales.  From  the  very  first 
(note  "The  Ting-a-ling  Stories")  he  has 
been  very  happy  in  his  tales  for  children  — 
whimsical  and  fanciful,  but  never  artificial 
or  clownish.  He  is  always  master  of  the 
situation,  and  he  can  be  dignified,  and  even 
imposing,  in  his  drollest  adventures.  His 
stories  are  not  a  mere  day's  tickling.  They 
will  refresh  and  entertain  generations  to 
come.  This  is  no  prophecy ;  it  is  rather  an 
opinion  derived  from  the  history  of  his 
successes  up  to  date.  His  early  produc 
tions  are  no  less  popular  than  his  later 
ones.  Stockton  is  no  stylist;  he  is  a  plain 

119 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

humorist.  Style  may  be  acquired,  but 
humor  must  be  born  in  a  man.  To  be 
sure,  there  are  several  kinds  of  humor,  and 
each  kind  has  its  devotees,  some  choos 
ing  Chicago  slang,  others  the  laboriously 
exaggerated  bad  spelling,  and  still  others 
that  vulgar  offshoot  colloquially  known  as 
"  freshness ; "  but  we  think  that  they  are 
wiser  and  happier  who  choose  the  odd, 
sweet,  and  charming  kind  developed  by  the 
creator  of  Pomona,  Mrs.  Leeks,  and  Mrs. 
Aleshine.  The  characters  in  Mr.  Stockton's 
books  are  one  of  the  best  companies  to  be 
met  in  our  literature. 

Unlike  most  American  writers,  Frank 
E.  —  as  he  has  called  himself  ever  since 
his  literary  beginning  —  has  drawn  back 
from  personal  contact  with  the  reading 
public,  for,  as  we  have  said,  he  is  a  shy 
man.  It  must  be  hoped  by  his  idealizing 
admirers  that  he  will  never  overcome  that 
120 


FRANCIS  RICHARD  STOCKTON 

shyness.  Some  authors  are  to  be  seen  and 
heard  —  though  few  of  them  are  to  the 
platform  manner  born,  like  Mr.  Cable  or 
John  Fox,  Jr.  We  would  have  this  be 
loved  story-teller  of  the  present  moment 
remain  where  he  has  ever  been  —  in  the 
background,  close  to  Wonderland.  There, 
we  like  to  imagine,  he  dwells  only  to  con 
jure  up  the  inimitable  children  of  his  brain 
and  send  them  forth  to  give  us  pleasure. 
What  a  beautiful  life  —  to  ease  the  troubled, 
to  cheer  the  downcast,  to  amuse  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men  and  women  and  chil 
dren  !  —  to  be  conscious  of  all  that  and 
yet  to  continue  unaffectedly  simple  and 
genial ! 

In  the  portrait  accompanying  this  sketch 
the  reader  will  see  the  kindliness  of  the 
eyes.  It  is  the  direct  reflection  of  kindli 
ness  of  the  heart.  Yes,  in  that  heart,  fresh 
ened  daily  perhaps  by  the  waters  of  some 

121 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

fountain  of  perpetual  youth,  is  kindliness 
(we  have  testimony  to  that  effect  before 
us),  sweetness,  and  unlimited  cheerfulness 
—  enough,  indeed,  to  re-create  all  those  who 
seek  his  heart  in  his  books. 


122 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 


/N  an  article  published  by  The  Book 
man  not  very  long  ago  Mr.  James 
Lane  Allen  remarked  that  Uncle  Re 
mus  was  one  of  the  two  names  in  Ameri 
can  fiction  which  have  attained  anything 
like  universality  of  acceptance,  the  other 
name  being,  of  course,  Uncle  Tom.     And 
yet  fame  was  thrust  upon  Mr.  Joel  Chand 
ler  Harris. 

It  happened  in  this  wise.  Mr.  Harris 
went  to  work  for  the  Atlanta  Constitution 
as  an  editorial  writer  in  1876,  succeeding 
Mr.  Samuel  W.  Small,  who  has  since  pre 
fixed  to  his  name  the  title  of  Reverend.  Mr. 
Small  had  made  a  success  with  sketches 
dealing  with  a  character  called  Uncle  Si, 
and  Capt.  Evan  P.  Howell,  the  editor  of 

123 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

the  Constitution,  desired  to  have  the  suc 
cess  maintained  in  some  form.  So  he  ap 
proached  Mr.  Harris  with  the  suggestion 
that  he  should  try  his  hand  at  negro 
sketches.  The  young  writer  was  diffident. 
He  pleaded  inexperience,  incapability ;  but 
Captain  Howell  wouldn't  listen  to  the 
excuses.  In  a  good-natured  way  he  pur 
sued  his  associate,  requesting,  begging, 
entreating,  encouraging.  If  Mr.  Harris 
would  only  put  into  black-and-white  those 
plantation  stories  with  which  he  was  accus 
tomed  to  entertain  the  staff !  If  he  would 
only  get  his  courage  up!  Finally,  the 
young  man  yielded  and  put  some  of  the 
memories  of  his  boyhood  in  Putnam 
County,  Georgia,  into  the  mouth  of  a  negro 
named  Uncle  Remus.  Uncle  Remus  he 
has  been  ever  since  the  publication  of  the 
first  sketch  —  Uncle  Remus,  famous  and 
beloved  throughout  the  land. 
124 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 

Captain  Howell  is  said  to  have  gone  to 
the  editors'  room  the  morning  of  the  first 
appearance  of  Uncle  Remus  and  shouted  : 
•'  Well,  Harris,  you're  a  trump  1  If  you 
just  keep  up  that  lick  your  fortune  is  made. 
Everybody  is  talking  about  Uncle  Remus, 
so  give  us  another  story."  It  was  given 
willingly. 

Mr.  Harris  was  born  in  1848  in  what 
used  to  be  known  as  Middle  Georgia. 
Like  many  another  of  our  well-established 
authors,  he  received  a  good  part  of  his 
education  at  the  printer's  case  in  a  country 
newspaper  office.  It  was  at  the  case  —  just 
as  in  the  story  of  Ho  wells  and  of  Mark 
Twain  —  that  the  Georgian  acquired  his 
love  of  journalism  —  a  love  which  often 
very  naturally  develops  into  a  love  for 
higher  and  more  durable  literature.  He 
joined  the  staff  of  the  Atlanta  Constitution 
at  the  age  of  eighteen.  For  a  time  he  served 

125 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

as  dramatic  critic,  in  addition  to  his  other 
service ;  but  he  soon  found  that  he  had  no 
taste  for  the  theatre.  It  must  be  that  it 
was  his  hard  lot  to  fall  among  poor  actors, 
for  it  was  not  long  before  he  gave  up  the 
work  and  formed  a  determination  to  visit 
the  theatre  as  seldom  as  possible.  There 
after,  he  was  virtually  permitted  by  the  edi 
tor  of  the  Constitution  to  follow  his  own  bent. 

But  the  story  is  moving  along  a  little 
too  fast.  It  should  be  said  that  Mr.  Harris 
was  fortunate  in  his  birthplace.  Eaton  ton, 
the  capital  of  Putnam  County,  was  not  a 
lively  spot,  in  a  mercantile  sense,  in  the 
days  before  the  war,  but  it  could  boast 
of  an  excellent  school,  Eatonton  Academy. 

Speaking  of  Eatonton,  the  Baltimore 
American,  some  thirteen  or  fourteen  years 
ago,  printed  this  strange  biography  of  Mr. 
Harris  under  the  title  of  "  A  Humorist's 
Sad  Romance  " : 
126 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 

"  Joel  C.  Harris,  the  famous  humorist, 
of  the  Atlanta  (Ga.)  Constitution,  has  had 
a  strangely  romantic  career.  His  father 
was  a  missionary,  and  it  was  at  the  small 
town  of  Boog-hia,  on  the  southern  coast  of 
Africa,  that  Joel  was  born.  He  was  edu 
cated  by  his  father,  and  is  a  profound 
Sanscrit  scholar,  besides  being  thoroughly 
versed  in  Hebraic  and  Buddhist  literature. 
Just  before  the  Civil  War  he  emigrated  to 
America,  and  taught  school  in  a  village 
near  Lake  Teeteelootchkee,  Fla.  There 
he  fell  in  love  with  Sallie  O.  Curtis, 
daughter  of  a  wealthy  planter,  and  soon 
was  engaged  by  Colonel  Curtis  as  a  private 
tutor.  The  parents  made  no  objection  to 
their  daughter's  choice  of  a  husband,  but 
the  war  came  on  before  the  marriage  could 
take  place,  and  so  Colonel  Curtis  and  Mr. 
Harris  went  away  to  the  war.  The 
Colonel  lost  all  his  property  during  the 

127 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

strife,  and  at  the  battle  of  Columbia,  S.  C., 
a  grape  shot  tore  his  leg  into  shreds. 
When  the  war  closed  Miss  Sallie  died  of 
yellow  fever,  and  Mr.  Harris  became  the 
support  and  comfort  of  the  maimed  sire  of 
his  dead  sweetheart.  The  two  yet  live 
together  in  a  vine-covered  cottage  near 
Atlanta.  Mr.  Harris  is  hardly  forty  years  of 
age,  but  his  snow-white  hair  tells  the  sorrow 
of  his  life.  He  is  noted  for  his  generosity, 
his  amiability  and  his  tenderness." 

The  fact  is  that  from  the  time  of  his 
birth  until  General  Sherman  swept  toward 
the  sea  after  burning  Atlanta,  Mr.  Harris 
lived  in  Eatonton.  When  he  was  six 
years  old  he  could  read,  and  it  is  said  that 
a  stray  copy  of  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield," 
met  in  his  juvenile  days,  did  much  to  de 
velop  his  taste  for  good  literature.  Joel 
attended  Eatonton  Academy  for  a  few 
terms,  and  at  the  age  of  twelve  went  to 
128 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 

work  for  Colonel  Turner,  the  publisher  of 
a  weekly  called  The  Countryman. 

It  was  the  boy's  own  enterprise  and  am 
bition  which  brought  this  about.  It  was 
Joel  himself  who  heard  that  Colonel 
Turner  was  in  need  of  a  boy  with  "  willing 
hands "  to  learn  the  printer's  trade,  and 
who  went  unbidden  and  unendorsed  to  ap 
ply  for  a  job.  The  publisher  and  the 
youngster  took  a  liking  to  each  other  on 
sight,  and  young  Harris  was  put  to  work 
forthwith. 

Those  were  unquestionably  among  the 
happiest  days  of  the  humorist's  life.  This 
is  not  saying,  of  course,  that  his  cup  of 
happiness  is  not  brimming  over  to-day; 
but  those  were  days  of  new  contentment. 
The  young  printer's  work  was  not  burden 
some  ;  but  the  happiest  fact  of  all  is  that 
his  employer,  Colonel  Turner,  had  a  rich 
library,  in  which  his  youngest  workman 

129 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

was  free  to  browse  in  leisure  moments. 
The  acorn  of  taste  for  good  books  which 
the  boy  had  cultivated  at  home  here  devel 
oped  into  an  oak ;  and  the  soil  in  which 
the  acorn  took  root  was  fertile,  and  there 
was  ample  room  for  the  spread  of  every 
growing  limb  and  bough. 

At  first  the  lad  delved  among  the  Eliza 
bethans.  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  too,  became 
one  of  his  favorite  authors  —  nowadays  Mr. 
Harris  leans  toward  Thackeray,  Steven 
son,  Scott,  Kipling  and  James  Whitcomb 
Riley  —  a  good  catholic  taste.  Few  boys 
ever  enjoyed  a  more  advantageous  course 
of  reading.  Gradually  the  juvenile  printer 
drifted  from  his  books  into  writing,  just 
as  a  student  one  day  quits  the  gallery  and 
starts  to  paint  some  work  of  his  own. 
Colonel  Turner  responded  to  the  ambition 
of  his  prote*g£  most  generously.  He 
praised  the  little  works  judiciously,  and 
130 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 

before  long  young  Harris  was  prompted 
to  doff  his  anonymity  and  stand  up  to  be 
judged  by  himself.  Thereafter  he  became 
a  regular  contributor  to  The  Countryman  — 
which  was  truly  rustic  in  scope  as  well  as 
in  title  —  and  the  name  of  Harris  began  to 
be  spoken  throughout  Georgia. 

This  pleasant  existence  was  interrupted 
by  the  war,  which  to  the  editor  and  his 
assistant  was  indeed  the  fulfilment  of  an 
ancient  threat.  When  Sherman  left  Atlanta 
to  march  to  the  sea,  he  shaped  his  course 
through  Eatonton,  and  before  him  fled  the 
loyal  Southerners.  Among  the  last  to 
leave  the  town  was  the  proprietor  of  The 
Countryman.  Young  Harris  remained  be 
hind  to  look  after  the  property.  Little 
damage  was  done  in  Eatonton,  but  the 
budding  author,  finding  the  state  of  affairs 
chaotic,  started,  when  the  war  was  over, 
to  make  his  fortune  elsewhere,  He  found 

131 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

employment  on  various  newspapers,  first 
in  Macon,  then  in  New  Orleans,  then  in 
Forsyth,  and  then  in  Savannah.  In  Sa 
vannah  he  secured  an  editorial  position  on 
the  Morning  News,  of  which  W.  T.  Thomp 
son,  the  author  of  "  Major  Jones's  Court 
ship,"  and  other  once  popular  humorous 
writings,  was  then  the  general  manager.  In 
Savannah,  the  vagrant  Eatontonian  married 
Miss  La  Rose,  and  there  he  lived,  with 
ever-increasing  success,  until  1876,  when 
yellow  fever  swept  through  the  town. 
Then  he  moved  to  Atlanta  and  went  to 
work  for  the  Constitution.  And  here  we 
shall  take  up  the  original  thread  of  this 
article. 

In  1880,  four  years  after  the  beginning 
of  Mr.  Harris's  connection  with  the  Con 
stitution^  the  Uncle  Remus  sketches,  which 
meantime  had  won  much  praise  through 
out  the  country,  were  numerous  enough 
132 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 

to  make  a  book  of,  and  "  Uncle  Remus : 
His  Songs  and  Sayings  "  was  published  by 
the  Apple  tons.  The  book  solidified  the 
author's  fame.  It  had  the  good  fortune 
to  be  reprinted  in  England.  Even  then, 
more  than  twenty  years  ago,  it  was  reason 
able  to  say  that  Uncle  Remus  was  one  of 
the  foremost  characters  in  American  fiction. 
In  1883,  "Nights  with  Uncle  Remus," 
was  published ;  the  following  year  "  Mingo 
and  Other  Sketches  in  Black  and  White  " ; 
in  1887,  "Free  Joe  and  Other  Georgian 
Sketches."  Up  to  date,  Harris's  books 
number  at  least  sixteen. 

But  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact 
that  all  the  time  the  successful  story-teller 
kept  up  his  editorial  work  on  the  paper  to 
whose  fame  he  was  contributing  so  materi 
ally.  Indeed,  until  his  retirement  from 
newspaper  work,  in  1900,  his  chief  title 
was  that  of  a  "hard-working  journalist." 

133 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

It  was  his  habit  until  within  recent  years 
to  give  his  mornings  and  afternoons  to  the 
Constitution  work,  and  his  evenings  to 
miscellaneous  literary  work.  He  was  able 
to  maintain  this  arduous  program  for  so 
long  a  time  because  of  his  apparently  in 
exhaustible  good  nature  and  his  simple 
manner  of  life  ;  and,  moreover,  attention 
to  duties  at  hand  soon  became  second 
nature  in  him.  In  recent  years,  however, 
he  gave  only  his  mornings  to  his  editorial 
labors.  "  His  habit,"  says  an  Atlanta  cor 
respondent,  "  was  to  come  down  to  the  of 
fice  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  get  his 
editorial  assignments  for  the  day,  and  then 
go  home  and  do  his  work,  sending  his 
copy  down  early  in  the  afternoon.  Such 
was  his  spirit  of  independence  that  if  the 
editor  chanced  to  be  late  in  coming  down 
to  the  office  he  would  not  waste  time  in 
waiting  for  him,  but  would  pick  up  his 
134 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 

bundle  of  newspapers  and  start  for  home. 
Nevertheless,  he  would  send  in  his  copy 
without  fail.  On  making  his  morning 
visit  to  the  office  Mr.  Harris  was  never 
out  of  sorts.  His  good  humor  was  peren 
nial,  and  he  never  failed  to  impart  it  to 
his  co-workers.  Though  it  was  his  lot  to 
write  editorials  on  political  topics,  he  never 
enjoyed  the  rancor  of  partisan  politics,  and 
he  managed  to  put  into  his  editorials 
enough  of  humor  to  make  the  work  pleas 
ant  to  himself  as  well  as  to  others. 

At  the  same  time,  the  idol  of  the  Consti 
tution  staff,  it  is  said,  never  took  a  hearty 
interest  in  politics ;  he  simply  bowed  to 
the  fact  that  as  an  editorial  writer  he 
could  hardly  eschew  politics  entirely.  But 
he  felt  that  he  owed  much  to  the  Consti 
tution  for  the  opportunity  it  had  given 
him  to  make  his  reputation;  and  he  al 
lowed  this  circumstance  to  outweigh  his 

135 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

personal  inclinations  until  the  time  came 
when  he  found  that  he  would  either  have 
to  give  up  his  editorial  work  or  neglect  his 
literary  contracts.  So,  finally,  on  Sept.  6, 
1900,  he  departed  from  the  office  of  the 
Constitution  for  good,  taking  with  him  the 
tearful  love  of  all  his  associates.  As  a  sort 
of  legacy,  he  left  two  sons  on  the  paper, 
Julian,  the  managing  news  editor,  and 
Evelyn,  the  city  editor. 

And  then,  almost  at  the  end  of  his  fifty- 
second  year,  the  dearest  Georgian  of  them 
all  entered  upon  an  unembarrassed  literary 
career,  with  every  promise  of  doing  more 
work  and  better  work  than  ever.  But 
even  if  this  promise  should  rest  unfulfilled 
— which  seems  almost  out  of  question  — 
we  have  with  us  Uncle  Remus  and  Aunt 
Minervy  Ann,  Brer  Rabbit  and  Brer  Fox, 
creations  unsurpassed  in  originality  and  in 
delightfulness. 
136 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS 

Mr.  Harris's  work  is  done  at  his  home  in 
West  End,  one  of  the  suburbs  of  Atlanta, 
and  few  visitors  are  permitted  to  interrupt 
him.  Not  that  he  is  gruff ;  he  is  simply 
retiring.  He  prefers  to  be  known  by  his 
books.  They  who  know  him  intimately  — 
and  they  are  not  many  —  say  that  he  is 
remarkably  kind  and  hospitable.  We  re 
spect  his  desire  for  privacy.  We  will  not 
even  knock  on  the  door  and  beg  one 
glimpse  of  his  private  life.  With  the 
whole  reading  public  we  shall  be  content 
to  note  his  boundless  cheerfulness  and 
rare  enjoyableness  as  a  story-teller. 


137 


DR.    S.    WEIR    MITCHELL. 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 


^BOUT  sixty  years  ago  Oliver  Wen- 
/J  dell  Holmes,  taking  dinner  one 
•^  -*•  night  in  Philadelphia  with  his 
friend,  Dr.  John  K.  Mitchell,  was  so  pleased 
with  one  of  Dr.  Mitchell's  boys,  by  name 
Silas  Weir,  then  a  little  more  than  ten 
years  old,  that  he  gave  the  boy  a  copy  of 
his  famous  ballad  on  the  frigate  Constitu 
tion. 

Some  seventeen  years  later,  in  1856, 
when  Silas  was  a  young  doctor,  with  a 
brand-new  degree,  he  showed  Dr.  Holmes 
a  book  of  poems  which  he  hoped  to  have 
published.  Dr.  Holmes  advised  the  young 
man  to  put  the  poems  away  until  he  was 
forty,  and  then  to  reconsider  his  determin 
ation  to  have  them  published.  "  The  pub- 

139 


LITTLE  PILGEIMAGES 

lication  of  these  verses  at  this  time,"  said 
the  genial  but  shrewd  Autocrat,"  "  will  do 
you  no  good.  They  will  not  help  you  in 
your  life  as  a  physician,  and  they  cannot 
stand  alone."  The  soundness  of  Dr. 
Holmes's  judgment  was  later  proved  by  the 
circumstance  that  the  young  man  blos 
somed  into  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
physicians  of  his  time.  Dr.  Mitchell's 
volume  of  poems,  "  The  Hill  of  Stones," 
published  about  four  years  ago,  contains 
just  one  of  the  poems  offered  to  the  Boston 
poet  in  1856,  namely, "  Herndon."  As  an 
author,  Dr.  Mitchell  is  less  celebrated  than 
his  friendly  counsellor ;  but  as  a  doctor  he 
is  far  more  celebrated  than  was  Dr.  Holmes 
in  his  palmiest  days. 

S.  Weir  Mitchell,  one  of  the  six  sons  of 

Dr.  John  Kearsley  Mitchell,  was  born  in 

Philadelphia  on  February  16,  1829.     His 

father  was  then  a  leader  in  his  profession. 

140 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

He  was  one  of  the  first  Americans  to  in 
vestigate  scientifically  "animal  magne 
tism,"  as  hypnotism  was  called  in  the 
early  part  of  the  last  century  ;  and,  more 
over,  he  was  a  highly  valued  contributor  to 
the  medical  periodicals  of  the  day.  It  is 
noteworthy  that  he  had  a  taste  for  litera 
ture.  Two  of  his  lyrics,  "  The  Old  Song 
and  the  New  Song  "  and  "  Prairie  Lea," 
had  a  wide  popularity  in  their  day. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  Weir  Mitchell 
entered  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 
There  he  spent  three  years  ;  and  afterward 
he  entered  Jefferson  Medical  College, 
Philadelphia,  in  which  his  father  was  a 
professor.  One  of  the  severest  disappoint 
ments  in  the  son's  life  came  in  1870, 
twenty  years  after  graduation,  when,  not 
withstanding  the  solicitation  of  influential 
friends,  he  failed  of  election  to  a  profes 
sorship  in  Jefferson  College.  However, 

141 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

this  disappointment,  like  the  one  which  he 
met  when  he  consulted  Dr.  Holmes  about 
his  first  book  of  poems,  worked  eventually 
to  his  greater  glory. 

After  graduation  from  Jefferson  College 
Dr.  Mitchell,  as  we  shall  call  our  author 
henceforth,  went  to  Paris,  whence,  owing 
to  an  attack  of  smallpox,  he  was  obliged 
to  return  in  less  than  two  years. 

By  this  time  the  young  doctor  had  lost 
sight  of  his  literary  star.  His  ambition 
was  to  teach  medicine.  The  first  article 
from  his  pen  appeared  in  the  American 
Journal  of  Medical  Science.  Other  articles 
followed  with  quick  regularity,  but  to 
none  of  these  early  writings,  we  believe, 
does  Dr.  Mitchell  attach  much  importance. 
From  1858  until  1862,  when  he  enlisted 
as  an  army  surgeon,  the  doctor  devoted 
his  spare  hours  to  the  study  of  poisons, 
particularly  snake  poisons.  Not  long  after 
142 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

the  Civil  War,  by  the  way,  one  of  the 
largest  rattlesnakes  ever  sent  to  him  died 
of  cold.  Dr.  Mitchell  had  the  skin  pre 
served  and  tanned,  and  he  sent  it  to  Dr. 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  with  the  sugges 
tion  that  it  might  make  a  worthy  binding 
for  "  Elsie  Vernier."  "  I  thank  you  for  it," 
Dr.  Holmes  wrote  back,  "  especially  be 
cause  it  makes  an  attractive  binding,  and 
I  know  that  its  bark  is  better  than  its 
bite."  It  would  be  interesting  to  pursue 
Dr.  Mitchell's  scientific  achievements,  but 
such  a  pursuit  would  be  too  long  to  agree 
with  the  purpose  of  this  sketch. 

However,  his  career  as  a  war  surgeon  is 
worth  looking  at,  for  it  had  something  to  do 
with  his  subsequent  advent  as  a  writer  of 
fiction.  Dr.  Mitchell  and  his  associates  made 
a  deep  study  not  only  of  the  effects  of  certain 
wounds  but  also  of  the  effects  of  environ 
ment.  Much  of  the  curious  information 

143 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

thus  derived  was  given  to  the  world 
through  the  medical  papers.  It  was  un 
doubtedly  the  study  followed  during  this 
period  which  formed  the  base  of  Dr. 
Mitchell's  now  universally  recognized  suc 
cess  as  a  neurologist.  The  universality  of 
his  fame  as  a  specialist  in  nervous  diseases 
has  two  substantial  witnesses.  One  is  the 
oration  delivered  at  Edinburgh  University 
in  1895,  when  he  received  the  title  of  Doctor 
of  Laws.  In  that  oration  he  was  spoken  of 
as  "  the  chief  ornament  to  medical  science 
in  the  new  world."  The  other  witness  is 
the  story  of  his  visit  some  years  ago  to  Dr. 
Charcot,  one  of  the  great  French  authorities 
on  nervous  diseases.  Dr.  Mitchell  did  not 
give  his  name ;  he  merely  said  that  he  was 
from  Philadelphia,  and  that  there  was 
something  the  matter  with  his  nerves. 

"  Why,"  said  Dr.  Charcot,  "  you  should 
never  have  come  beyond  Philadelphia  for 
144 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

advice  for  such  an  ailment.  You  have  a 
physician  in  your  own  city  better  qualified 
to  manage  your  case  than  I  am." 

"  Indeed,"  the  visitor  is  said  to  have  re 
marked  ;  "  and  who  may  he  be  ?  " 

"Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell,"  replied  Dr. 
Charcot;  "and  as  I  know  him  by  corres 
pondence  I  will  venture  to  give  you  a 
letter  to  him.  You  should  consult  him 
upon  your  return  home." 

"  No,  thanks,"  said  the  American  smil 
ing,  "I  am  Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell." 

Certainly  a  handsome  compliment  for 
Dr.  Mitchell  1  And  certainly  a  remarkable 
piece  of  professional  modesty  on  the  part 
of  Dr.  Charcot  1 

Perhaps  it  is  well  to  say  at  this  point 
that,  in  1896,  Harvard  University  also 
honored  Dr.  Mitchell  with  the  title  of  Doctor 
of  Laws ;  that  he  is  a  member  of  the  Ameri 
can  National  Academy  of  Sciences,  an 

145 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

honorary  member  of  the  Clinical  Society 
of  London,  the  London  Medical  Society, 
the  Royal  Academy  of  Medicine  of  Rome, 
and  a  corresponding  member  of  many 
other  foreign  medical  societies ;  and  that 
he  was  once  President  of  the  Congress  of 
American  Physicians  and  Surgeons.  In 
1888  the  University  of  Bologna  conferred 
on  him  the  title  of  Doctor  of  Medicine. 

Dr.  Mitchell's  entrance  into  romantic 
literature  was  made  anonymously  and,  it 
might  be  said,  accidentally.  Soon  after 
the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  the  story  goes, 
he  and  some  professional  associates  one 
day  discussed  all  sides  of  the  question 
whether  the  loss  of  the  limbs  involves  the 
loss  of  the  victim's  individuality.  As  a 
result  of  that  discussion  Dr.  Mitchell 
wrote  the  story  of  the  fictitious  case  of 
one  George  Dedlow,  who  had  suffered  the 
loss  of  his  arms  and  his  legs.  The  story, 
146 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

which,  as  they  who  have  read  it  know,  is 
an  intensely  interesting  complication  of 
romance  and  science,  came  to  the  hands  of 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Furness,  one  of  Dr.  Mitchell's 
friends,  who  took  the  liberty  of  sending  it 
to  Edward  Everett  Hale,  in  Boston.  Dr. 
Hale,  who,  at  that  time,  was  at  the  height 
of  his  literary  power,  saw  that  the  story 
was  rare  material,  and  he  submitted  it 
forthwith  to  the  editor  of  The  Atlantic 
Monthly.  It  was  promptly  accepted,  and 
the  first  Dr.  Mitchell  knew  of  what  had 
happened  was  when  he  received  a  proof  of 
the  story,  together  with  a  good-sized  check 
and  a  note  complimenting  him  on  the 
freshness  and  attractiveness  of  his  article. 
"The  Case  of  George  Dedlow,"  indeed, 
was  described  so  realistically  that,  accord 
ing  to  tradition,  subscriptions  were  raised 
for  the  poor  victim's  support  and  comfort. 
The  newspapers,  too,  started  a  discussion 

147 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

of  the  prodigy,  and  it  was  a  long  time  be 
fore  the  public  became  persuaded  that  the 
tale  was  utter  fiction,  put  together  with 
extraordinary  skill. 

Dr.  Mitchell's  first  book  was  "  Children's 
Hours,"  a  collection  of  fairy  tales,  illus 
trated  by  Dr.  John  Packard.  The  book 
was  in  no  sense  a  great  literary  effort ;  it 
was  intended  to  serve,  and  did  serve,  a 
charitable  purpose.  His  first  novel  was 
"In  War  Times,"  published  serially  in 
The  Atlantic  Monthly  in  1885.  Between 
that  time  and  the  publication  of  "  Hugh 
Wynne  "  in  1897,  the  Philadelphian  wrote 
a  number  of  works,  the  most  notable 
among  which  were  a  few  dramatic  poems. 
The  poems  delighted  the  critical;  they 
were  caviare  to  the  general.  Dr.  Mitchell 
is  not  a  poet  of  the  "golden  clime"  of 
which  Tennyson  speaks ;  he  has  simply 
found  in  poetry  the  fittest  vehicle  for  the 
148 


S.  WEIB  MITCHELL 

expression  of  some  attractive  and  stirring 
ideas.  His  verse  reveals  his  fine  sympathy 
with  the  true  poets  rather  than  his  intimate 
association  with  them. 

Unqualified  success  came  to  the  veteran 
author  with  the  publication  in  1897  of 
"  Hugh  Wynne,  Free  Quaker,"  which 
will  be  remembered  in  years  to  come  as 
one  of  the  choicest  of  American  novels. 
The  writing  of  "  Hugh  Wynne,"  which 
was  done  at  Bar  Harbor  in  the  summer  of 
1896,  in  less  than  two  months,  took  years 
of  preparation.  It  is  said  that  he  wrote  to 
a  woman  "for  the  name  and  a  full  descrip 
tion  of  every  article  of  apparel  worn  by  a 
lady  in  America  in  the  years  before  and 
about  the  time  "  of  the  Revolution.  More 
over  :  "  One  will  find  on  the  shelves  of 
his  library  at  home,"  says  a  casual  biogra 
pher,  "great  rows  of  books  consulted  in 
the  preparation  of  the  novel,  and  among 

149 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

them,  as  samples,  will  be  noticed  Keith's 
4  Provincial  Councillors  of  Pennsylvania/ 
Watson's 4 Annals,'  Trumble's '  The  Knight 
ly  Soldier,'Fiske's  'Critical Period  of  Amer 
ican  History,'  *  The  True  George  Wash 
ington,'  by  Ford;  Professor  McMaster's 
4  History  of  the  United  States,'  « The  Can 
noneer,'  by  Buell,  and  scores  of  others, 
some  of  them  very  rare."  We  find  it  also 
said  that  every  chapter  of  importance  in 
the  story  was  written  at  least  twice,  and 
that  some  chapters  were  written  even  three 
times,  before  the  manuscript  was  sent  to 
the  publisher.  Nothing  which  Dr.  Mitchell 
has  written  since  shows  a  power  equal  to 
the  power  of  "  Hugh  Wynne."  That 
novel,  therefore,  must  be  regarded  as  his 
supreme  literary  effort.  "The  Adven 
tures  of  Francois  "  proved  entertaining  and 
nothing  more ;  its  early  popularity  was  an 
echo  of  the  immense  popularity  of  the 
150 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

Revolutionary  story.  "  Dr.  North  and  His 
Friends  "  is  not,  as  many  suppose,  an  auto 
biography  ;  but  it  may  fairly  be  said  that 
by  means  of  Dr.  North  the  author  relates 
some  of  his  most  remarkable  personal  im 
pressions  and  personal  experiences. 

Dr.  Holmes  was  once  a  little  disturbed, 
and  much  amused,  at  the  same  time,  by  a 
reference  to  his  "medicated  writings!" 
The  careful  reader  will  note  a  strong  patho 
logical  element  in  most  of  Dr.  Mitchell's 
works  ;  not  enough,  however,  to  warrant 
describing  them  as  "  medicated."  The 
fact  is,  Dr.  Mitchell  has  made  good  use  of 
his  rare  scientific  knowledge  in  the  devel 
opment  of  many  of  his  characters.  One  of 
his  intimate  friends  is  reported  to  have 
said  once  that  the  doctor  is  constantly 
studying  human  characteristics,  especially 
the  characteristics  of  singular  persons.  •'  He 
picks  out  their  brains  in  a  very  fine  and 

151 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

delicate  way,"  said  the  friend.  "  Thus  he 
studies  human  nature,  much  in  that  same 
synthetical  manner  in  which  he  dissects  a 
physical  malady." 

Personally  the  author  of  "Hugh  Wynne" 
is  described  as  gentle,  cordial,  and,  in  con 
vivial  company,  very  entertaining.  It  has 
frequently  been  said  of  him  that  he  appears 
to  be  what  he  is, —  a  scholar  and  a  scientist. 

Some  years  ago,  when  Dr.  Mitchell  was 
a  guest  in  one  of  the  semi-literary  clubs 
in  London,  he  and  the  circle  around  him 
fell  into  a  discussion  of  problem  novels, 
which  finally  resolved  itself  into  a  discus 
sion  of  "  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles,"  then 
in  the  heyday  of  its  popularity.  Dr. 
Mitchell  took  his  ground  on  two  points  : 
he  expressed  admiration  of  Mr.  Hardy  as 
an  artist,  but  utter  dislike  of  the  scheme 
of  "  Tess."  A  man  who  had  meantime 
joined  the  circle  entered  quietly  and  unob- 
152 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

trusively  into  the  conversation,  admitting 
the  force  of  some  of  Dr.  Mitchell's  general 
objections  to  problem  novels,  but  maintain 
ing  the  ethical  and  artistic  merits  of  the 
plan  of  Judge  Hardy's  new  book.  The 
newcomer  showed  such  an  intimate  knowl 
edge  of  the  construction  of  "  Tess  "  that 
the  American  paid  more  than  ordinary 
attention  to  him.  At  length,  when  the 
company  was  dispersing,  Dr.  Mitchell's 
host,  with  an  innocent  smile,  proceeded  to 
make  the  two  debaters  formally  acquainted 
with  each  other. 

"This  is  a  friend  of  mine,  Doctor,"  he 
said  to  his  guest,  "  about  whose  work  you 
know  a  great  deal.  Allow  me  to  intro 
duce  to  you  Thomas  Hardy,  with  whom 
you  can  hardly  find  any  fault  for  defend 
ing  poor  Tess." 

The  acquaintance  thus  curiously  begun 
has  since  ripened  into  a  rich  friendship. 

153 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Dr.  Mitchell  does  most  of  his  literary 
work  at  Bar  Harbor,  in  the  summer.  There 
is  no  sign  of  the  end  of  this  pure  labor  of 
love  ;  but  the  work  which  exists  already  is 
sufficient,  in  itself,  to  show  that  a  man  bur 
dened  with  the  gravest  interests  of  medi 
cal  science  may  give  profitable  and  brilliant 
employment  to  his  imagination. 


154 


ROBERT    GRANT. 


ROBERT  GRANT 


GRANT  leads  the  Ameri- 
can  satirists.  Many  writers,  un- 
named  paragraphers  and  critics  of 
high  degree,  have  pursued  him  relentlessly  ; 
but  he  will  not  surrender.  Contrariwise, 
it  is  more  likely  that  they  will  yet  sur 
render  to  him.  He  has  Napoleon's  way  of 
turning  upon  pursuers. 

The  satirist  is  not  always  clearly  under- 
derstood.  For  some  of  this  misunderstand 
ing  the  satirist  himself  is  to  blame.  Mr. 
Grant,  for  example,  has  never  yet  explained 
what  he  meant  by  saying  in  "  The  Art  of 
Living"  that  a  satisfactory  life  demands  an 
income  of  ten  thousand  a  year.  On  the 
other  hand,  some  of  the  misunderstanding 
is  due  to  a  lack  of  humor  among  his  critics. 

155 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

And  at  the  bottom  of  the  misunderstanding 
is  the  natural  inconsistency  which  prompted 
Mr.  Aldrich  to  write  in  "Marjorie  Daw" — 
"  I  have  known  a  woman  to  satirize  a  man 
for  years,  and  marry  him  after  all." 

An  incident  which  took  place  not  long 
ago  illustrates  Judge  Grant's  sincerity.  The 
statement  had  been  made  in  a  periodical 
now  defunct  that  "  a  sufficiency  of  money 
has  made  things  pretty  pleasant  for  our  liter 
ary  philosopher."  Although  averse,  un 
like  many  professional  writers,  to  taking 
advantage  of  opportunities  for  controversy, 
the  Judge  made  this  reply  to  the  state 
ment  :  "  It  is  true  that  for  some  years  I 
have  had  a  comfortable  income ;  but  if  I 
have  been  able  to  command  the  advantages 
of  modern  life  at  the  rate  of  $10,000  a  year, 
it  is  because  I  have  earned  the  money  by 
the  sweat  of  my  brow  through  literary  and 
legal  work,  and  not  because  my  l  judicial 
156 


ROBERT  GRANT 


seat'  is  *  padded'  with  inherited  stocks  and 
bonds  ...  It  may  interest  those  who  have 
convinced  themselves  that  my  philosophy  is 
founded  on  a  patrimony,  to  know  that  from 
the  time  I  left  the  Law  School  in  1879  the 
yearly  income  which  I  have  received  from 
vested  property  has  been  so  small  as  barely 
to  pay  for  the  life  insurance  which  I  carry, 
and  that  I  have  acquired  the  money  which 
I  spend  or  save  by  my  own  exertions.  It  is 
true  that  I  was  brought  up  in  comfort  and 
given  every  opportunity  to  follow  my  tastes, 
but  this  is  all  I  owe  to  family  income." 

The  incident  is  worth  recalling  for  the 
light  which  it  throws  on  the  novelist's  eco 
nomical  position.  The  man  who  is  com 
petent  to  make  ten  thousand  a  year  is  wel 
come  to  his  enjoyment  of  it. 

Robert  Grant  first  earned  some  celebrity 
as  a  writer  while  at  Harvard,  which  he  en 
tered  after  his  graduation  from  the  Bos- 

157 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

ton  Latin  School  in  1869,  when  he  was 
seventeen  years  old.  His  literary  career 
began  with  his  contributions  to  the  college 
papers,  notably  The  Lampoon.  That  his 
literary  skill  was  recognized  at  Harvard  is 
proved  by  his  election  to  the  office  of  class 
poet  at  graduation,  in  1873.  That  summer, 
while  abroad,  he  seems  to  have  determined 
upon  following  his  first  taste,  to  use  his  own 
expression ;  for  at  the  end  of  the  summer 
he  went  back  to  Harvard  for  a  three  years' 
course  in  English  and  foreign  literature, 
upon  the  completion  of  which  he  received 
the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy. 

Why  he  decided  to  chose  another  profes 
sion  has  never  been  divulged,  but,  anyhow, 
at  the  end  of  the  summer  of  1876,  he  entered 
the  Harvard  Law  School.  Three  years 
afterward  he  was  graduated  from  it,  and 
forthwith  he  became  a  member  of  the  Bar 
and  an  active  practitioner. 
158 


ROBERT  GRANT 


Mr.  Grant  left  Harvard  with  a  budding 
reputation.  In  company  with  Mr.  F.  J. 
Stimson  ("  J.  S.  of  Dale  "),  Barrett  Wen 
dell  (now  professor  of  English  at  Harvard), 
F.  G.  Attwood,  whose  untimely  death  has 
bereft  our  literature  of  one  of  its  happiest 
decorators,  and  Mr.  John  T.  Wheelwright, 
now  a  lawyer  in  Boston,  he  had  polished 
The  Lampoon  considerably.  Perhaps  his 
most  popular  work  at  this  time  was  "  The 
Little  Tin  Gods  on  Wheels ;  or,  Society  in 
our  Modern  Athens,"  a  burlesque  after  the 
Greek  manner,  which  appeared  in  The 
Lampoon,  with  illustrations  by  Attwood. 
In  fact,  it  was  to  be  found  in  a  book  pub 
lished  by  Sever,  together  with  the  young 
satirist's  other  promising  works,  "  The  Wall 
Flowers," " The  Chaperons,"  and  "Oxy 
gen,  a  Mt.  Desert  Pastoral,"  squibs  dealing 
with  the  foibles  of  fashionable  society. 

Thus  favorably  introduced  to  the  reading 

159 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

public,  he  lost  no  time  in  striking  the  iron 
while  it  was  hot,  and  in  1880  gave  out  his 
first  novel,  "  The  Confessions  of  a  Frivolous 
Girl,"  which,  by  reason  of  its  remarkable 
exposition  of  the  character  of  the  leading 
lady,  as  she  may  be  called,  and  its  popular 
attractiveness,  won  immediate  success  at 
home  and  abroad.  Three  years  later  his 
second  book,  "  The  Knave  of  Hearts,"  the 
autobiography  of  a  ruthless  young  man, 
was  published ;  and  the  same  year  appeared 
in  The  Century  the  articles  which  make  up 
"An  Average  Man,"  and  a  satire  on  Wall 
Street  entitled  "  The  Lambs,  a  Tragedy." 
In  1883,  too,  it  may  be  mentioned,  Mr. 
Grant  read  at  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  re 
union  at  Harvard  a  poem  called  "  Yankee 
Doodle."  In  1885  "A  Romantic  Young 
Lady,"  another  skit  on  fashionable  life, 
made  its  appearance ;  and  that  year  he  also 
served  as  the  poet  of  the  two  hundred  and 
160 


ROBERT  GRANT 


fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  establishment  of 
the  Boston  Latin  School. 

The  following  year,  1886,  he  finished 
what,  up  to  that  time,  was  by  far  his 
most  serious  work,  "  Face  to  Face,"  which 
was  published  anonymously.  In  it  Anglo 
mania  and  the  labor  problem  are  touched 
on  boldly  and  brilliantly,  and  even  to-day 
the  points  of  the  book  are  fresh  and  spark 
ling.  Later  came  "  The  Reflections  of  a 
Philosopher,"  ««  The  Opinions  of  a  Married 
Man,"  "  Searchlight  Letters,"  "  The  Art  of 
Living,"  and,  last  of  all,  "Unleavened 
Bread."  "  He  says,"  once  remarked  a 
man,  "  what  you  have  thought  and  wanted 
to  say  yourself";  and  a  better  compli 
ment  could  hardly  be  paid  his  philosophy. 

A  writer  who  went  to  see  Judge  Grant 
some  years  ago  said :  "  He  has  cultivated 
to  a  rare  degree  the  faculty  which  is  of  the 
utmost  importance  to  every  literary  man, 

161 


LITTLE  PILGKIMAGES 

namely,  that  of  concentration.  The  greater 
part  of  his  writing  is  done  during  the  inter 
vals  of  business  in  the  morning  hours  at  his 
office.  There,  the  casual  visitor  is  almost 
certain  to  find  him,  seated  at  his  desk,  with 
his  manuscript  spread  out  before  him.  He 
will  drop  his  pen,  upon  the  instant,  to  con 
sider  some  point  of  legal  technique,  with 
which  imagination  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do,  listen  attentively,  take  notes  or  give  ad 
vice,  as  though  this  were  the  sole  object  of 
his  existence ;  then,  when  the  interruption 
ceases,  he  will  turn  back  to  his  unwritten 
page,  finishing  that  and  another  too,  it  may 
be,  before  the  morning  goes,  if  he  is  in  the 
vein.  This  power  of  leaving  off  and  begin 
ning  again  quickly  was  not  easily  acquired. 
It  is  the  result  of  long  training  in  years  of 
practical  experience.  But,  like  every  true 
artist,  Mr.  Grant  really  carries  his  work 
with  him  wherever  he  goes.  He  is  always 
162 


ROBERT  GRANT 


recording  and  storing  up  impressions,  taking 
mental  notes,  or  working  out  details  of  con 
struction,  even  when  these  matters  seem  to 
be  the  farthest  from  his  thoughts  ;  and  he 
is  accustomed  to  say  that  the  actual  writing 
of  a  story  troubles  him  very  little  since,  with 
him,  when  writing  begins,  the  most  difficult 
part  of  the  task  is  already  accomplished, 
But,  in  spite  of  his  fluent  pen,  he  has 
learned  to  look  at  his  work  objectively,  and 
he  is  extremely  self-critical,  having  de 
stroyed  more  than  once  a  tale  half  told,  from 
conviction  that  it  failed  to  do  him  justice." 
In  1882  Mayor  Green  of  Boston  selected 
Mr.  Grant  as  his  private  secretary,  and  in 
1888  Mayor  O'Brien  of  Boston  appointed 
him  a  member  of  the  board  of  water  com 
missioners.  This  latter  post  he  held  until 
a  few  years  ago,  when  he  was  appointed  a 
Judge  in  the  Probate  Court  of  Suffolk 
County,  sitting  in  Boston.  There,  almost 

163 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

every  day,  he  may  be  seen  by  anyone  visit 
ing  Boston,  a  medium-sized,  delicate-look 
ing  man,  with  shrewd  features,  an  eye  sharp 
as  a  detective's,  a  somewhat  brisk  manner, 
and  a  faint  but  pleasant  voice,  to  which  the 
most  learned  counsel  lend  eager  ears.  Since 
his  appointment  to  the  Bench  he  has  limited 
his  literary  activity  to  two  hours  a  day, 
which  short  but  productive  period  he  has 
been  wont  to  spend  generally  at  the  Athe 
naeum  Library  on  Beacon  Street,  a  stone's 
throw  from  the  Court  House. 

Judge  Grant  is  very  happy  in  his  chil 
dren,  and  this  circumstance  may  account  for 
his  delightful  books  for  boys,  "Jack  Hall " 
and  "Jack  in  the  Bush."  He  is  a  keen 
though  perhaps  not  enthusiastic  sportsman. 
Every  few  years  he  and  his  wife,  who  was 
Miss  Gait,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Sir  Alex 
ander  Tillock  Gait,  the  Canadian  statesman, 
go  bicycling  in  Europe. 
164 


ROBERT  GRANT 


This  excursive  disposition  does  not  nar 
row  his  enjoyment  of  what  is  best  in  town 
life.  It  has  been  said  of  him :  "  He  is 
not  only  an  admirable  talker  with  a  nimble 
wit,  apt  at  repartee,  but  he  is  also  a  genial 
sympathetic  listener,  thus  combining  very 
happily  the  qualities  which  make  a  man 
hail-fellow-well  met  wherever  he  goes  ;  and 
no  one  meeting  Mr.  Grant  for  the  first  time 
can  fail  to  recognize  and  delight  in  that 
quick  sense  of  humor  which  is  so  character 
istic  of  his  writing." 

A  few  years  ago  he  was  interviewed 
regarding  his  likes  and  dislikes.  He  said 
that  his  favorite  prose  authors  were 
Thackeray  and  Balzac,  his  favorite  poets, 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe,  his  favorite  book, 
"  Vanity  Fair,"  his  favorite  play,"  Hamlet," 
his  favorite  heroines  in  fiction,  Becky  Sharp 
and  Eugdnie  Grandet,  his  favorite  heroes  in 
fiction,  Santa  Glaus  and  Brer  Rabbit;  and 

165 


LITTLE  PILGKIMAGES 

he  admires  truth  most  in  men  and  loving 
sympathy  in  women. 

His  strength  as  a  writer  lies  in  an  un 
surpassed  ability  to  detect  and  delineate 
shams,  and  this  ability  shines  brilliantly  in 
the  character  of  Selma  White,  the  heroine 
of  "  Unleavened  Bread."  The  book  is  a 
protest  against  superficiality ;  the  character 
of  Selma  White  is  a  monument  of  vanity. 
We  have  all  met  Selmas,  rampant  women  — 
there  are  men  like  them,  of  course  —  who 
flatter  themselves  that  they  are  born  to 
grace  every  resting-place  and  brush  aside 
difficulties  that  would  have  staggered  Napo 
leon  or  Catherine  de  Medici.  The  author 
has  contradicted  the  opinion  that  Selma  is  a 
shaft  aimed  at  women's  clubs.  "  It  is  simply 
that  modern  women's  clubs  are  the  best 
medium  for  that  kind  of  women,"  he  says 
"  that  I  depicted  Selma  as  a  prime  mover 
in  some  of  them.  But  she  exists  outside  of 
166 


ROBERT  GRANT 


women's  clubs   probably   more  plentifully 
than  in  them." 

It  has  been  said  that  Judge  Grant  is  timid 
about  forcing  his  way  into  public  attention. 
The  reply  quoted  from  early  in  this  article 
was  an  exception  to  an  apparently  firmly  es 
tablished  rule.  At  the  time  when  comment 
on  his  ten-thousand-a-year  proposition  was 
severest  Judge  Grant  wrote  to  a  friend  for 
advice,  and  he  was  very  easily  persuaded  to 
give  no  heed  to  his  critics.  At  the  same 
time,  if  what  he  had  thought  of  saying 
would  have  blown  the  fog  away,  it  would 
have  been  better  for  him  then  to  have  set 
tled  the  question  decisively.  But,  he  was 
content  for  the  nonce  to  have  his  retiring 
disposition  approved ;  and  a  philosopher  of 
this  type  rather  invites  than  forbids  attack. 
But,  after  all,  even  his  harshest  critics 
praise  his  rare  skill  in  the  exposition  of 
character,  his  remarkable  fertility  of  wit, 

167 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

and  his  complete  mastery  of  the  technique 
of  literature.  Nor  is  it  to  be  gainsaid  that 
his  career  has  illustrated  the  wisdom  of  his 
lines  in  "  The  Lambs  "  : 

Success  is  Labor's  prize 

Work  is  the  mother  of  fame. 
And  who  on  a  boom  shall  rise 

To  the  height  of  an  honest  name  ? 
The  bee  by  industry  reapeth 

The  stores  which  enrich  the  hives. 
All  that  is  thrifty  creepeth, 

For  toil  is  the  law  of  lives, 
And  he  who  reaps  without  sowing, 

A  bitter  harvest  reaps  ; 
The  law  of  gradual  growing 

Is  the  law  that  never  sleeps. 


168 


F.    MARION    CRAWFORD. 


F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 


f^ylNCE  1893,  when  he  made  his  first 

\  tour  through  the  country  as  a  lec- 
^*-^  turer,  F.  Marion  Crawford  has  be 
come  a  somewhat  familiar  figure  to  many 
Americans,  who  have  noted  his  athletic 
form,  his  handsome  face,  his  melodious 
yoice,  his  polished  deportment.  He  is 
easily  the  best  known  of  the  American 
authors  who  make  their  homes  abroad. 

In  Major  Pond's  "Reminiscences,"  by 
the  way,  they  who  have  heard  Mr.  Crawford 
read  from  his  novels  or  recite  his  descrip 
tion  of  Pope  Leo  XIII,  will  find  a  very 
interesting  account  of  the  author's  exper 
iences  during  his  American  tours. 

Mr.  Crawford  is  a  cosmopolite  of  the  first 
rank.  He  was  born  in  Bagni  di  Lucca, 

169 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Italy,  August  2,  1854.  His  father  was 
Thomas  Crawford,  the  famous  sculptor, 
who,  born  in  the  west  of  Ireland  and  reared 
in  America,  had,  some  years  before,  been 
sent  to  Rome  to  master  his  profession.  He 
had  finished  studying  with  the  great  Thor- 
waldsen,  and  had  made  a  reputation  of  his 
own,  when  he  met  and  married  Miss  Louisa 
Ward,  who  was  visiting  Rome  with  Dr. 
Samuel  G.  Howe  and  his  wife,  Julia  Ward 
Howe.  Marion  was  the  youngest  of  four 
children.  One  of  his  sisters,  Mrs.  Fraser, 
has  made  no  small  name  for  herself  as  a 
writer. 

At  the  age  of  two,  Marion  was  sent  to 
live  for  awhile  with  kinsfolk  in  Bordentown, 
N.  J.  "  Among  the  earliest  things  that  I 
remember,"  he  said  once  to  an  interviewer, 
"  is  my  great  delight  in  watching  the  com 
ing  and  going  of  the  trains  as  they  shot 
across  the  farm  near  the  old  house." 
170 


F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 

His  father  died  in  1857,  and  then  Marion 
was  taken  back  to  Italy,  where  he  spent  his 
early  days. 

"  Most  of  my  boyhood,"  he  said,  to  an 
interviewer,  when  he  was  in  this  country  on 
his  first  lecture  tour,  "  was  spent  under  the 
direction  of  a  French  governess.  Not  only 
did  I  learn  her  language  from  her,  but  all 
of  my  studies,  geography,  arithmetic,  and 
so  forth,  were  taught  me  in  French,  and  I 
learned  to  write  it  with  great  readiness,  as 
a  mere  boy,  because  it  was  the  language  of 
my  daily  tasks.  The  consequence  is  that 
to  this  day  I  write  French  with  the  ease  of 
English.  There  have  been  times  when  I 
know  that  I  have  lost  some  of  my  facility 
in  speaking  French  through  long  absence 
from  the  country,  but  the  acquirement  of 
writing  is  always  with  me,  which  shows  the 
value  of  early  impressions  in  that  direction." 

When  twelve  years  old  Marion  was  sent 

171 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

to  St.  Paul's  School,  Concord,  N.  H.,  where 
he  remained  for  two  years.  Readers  fam 
iliar  with  his  portraits  will  remember  that 
in  most  of  them  he  is  represented  as  smok 
ing.  This  inveterate  habit  he  acquired  dur 
ing  his  first  year's  residence  at  St.  Paul's. 

The  age  of  fifteen  found  the  migrant 
youth  back  in  Rome  again,  where  he  took 
up  the  study  of  Greek  and  mathematics. 
Later  he  studied  with  a  private  tutor  at 
Hatfield  Broadoak,  in  Essex,  England,  and 
from  this  school  he  went  to  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  passed  four  terms. 
There  he  perfected  himself  in  German, 
Swedish  and  Spanish.  He  found  German 
of  good  use  when,  later,  he  studied  at 
Karlsruhe  and  at  Heidelberg.  At  the  age 
of  twenty-two  he  returned  to  Rome  to 
study  at  the  University  of  Rome.  There 
one  of  the  professors  interested  him  in 
Buddhism  and  the  other  Oriental  mysteries. 
172 


F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 

This  professor,  who  recognized  the  young 
pupil's  aptitude  in  languages,  advised  him 
to  go  to  India  and  study  Sanscrit,  and  then 
returning,  he  could  readily  obtain  a  pro 
fessorship.  The  advice  appealed  to  young 
Crawford,  and  he  borrowed  a  hundred 
pounds  and  sailed  for  Bombay.  There  he 
occasionally  wrote  articles  for  one  of  the 
newspapers,  but  his  employment  was  un 
certain,  and  two  pounds  represented  all  his 
worldly  possessions  when  the  editor  of  the 
Bombay  Gazette  informed  him  that  the 
editor  of  the  Allahabad  Indian  Herald  was 
in  need  of  a  "  good  man."  Would  he  take 
the  position  ?  "  Would  a  duck  swim  ?  " 
said  Mr.  Crawford;  and  off  he  went  to 
Allahabad,  a  thousand  miles  away.  There 
he  learned  that  the  "  good  man  "  was  sup 
posed  to  fill  the  posts  of  reporter,  managing 
editor  and  editorial  writer,  with  now  and 
then  a  turn  at  type-setting.  Thus  none  of 

173 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

the  sixteen  hours  of  the  working  day  would 
be  wasted.  But  Mr.  Crawford  couldn't 
afford  to  grumble.  Instead  he  buckled 
down  to  what  he  describes  as  the  hardest 
eighteen  months'  work  of  his  life. 

In  1880,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  with 
no  valuable  possessions  except  his  experi 
ence,  he  returned  to  Rome,  and  thence, 
early  in  1881,  he  set  out  for  America. 
The  old  steamship  in  which  he  took  passage 
broke  down  in  mid-ocean,  and  Mr.  Craw 
ford's  great  physical  strength  and  nervous 
energy  were  in  constant  demand.  As  the 
only  cabin  passenger  on  board,  he  had 
the  honor  of  alternating  on  deck  with  the 
captain  and  the  mates.  At  Bermuda, 
where  the  ship  put  in  for  repairs,  he  nar 
rowly  escaped  drowning.  Finally,  at  the 
end  of  two  months,  the  ship  reached  New 
York.  In  this  country  he  made  his  home 
at  times  with  his  uncle,  Samuel  Ward,  the 
174 


F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 

Horace  of  "Dr.  Claudius,"  and  at  times 
with,  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe. 
He  had  not  been  long  in  the  country  before 
he  entered  Harvard  College,  where  he  took 
a  special  course  in  Sanscrit  under  Prof. 
Charles  Lanman. 

He  left  Harvard  in  a  state  of  uncertainty. 
He  was  ready  to  do  anything  to  earn  a 
living.  He  tried  unsuccessfully  to  place 
some  articles  on  philology.  He  reviewed 
books,  principally  for  the  New  York  Times. 
He  lectured  on  "  The  Origin  of  Sacrifice." 
He  won  a  small  sum  of  money  with  an 
article  on  the  silver  question.  One  day 
early  in  May,  1882,  his  kind  uncle,  Samuel 
Ward,  asked  him  to  dinner  at  the  New 
York  Club,  which  was  then  situated  in 
Madison  Square.  But  here  is  where  Mr. 
Crawford  should  come  in  to  tell  his  own 
interesting  story : 

"  As  was  perfectly  natural,  we  began  to 

175 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

exchange  stories  while  smoking,  and  I  told 
him  (Mr.  Ward),  with  a  great  deal  of  de 
tail,  my  recollections  of  an  interesting  man 
whom  I  met  in  Simla.  When  I  had  fin 
ished,  he  said  to  me :  *  That  is  a  good  two- 
part  magazine  story,  and  you  must  write  it 
out  immediately.'  He  took  me  around  to 
hi»  apartments,  and  that  night  I  began  to 
write  the  story  of  *  Mr.  Isaacs.'  Part  of 
the  first  chapter  was  written  afterward,  but 
the  rest  of  that  chapter  and  several  succeed 
ing  chapters  are  the  story  I  told  to  Uncle 
Sam.  I  kept  at  it  from  day  to  day,  getting 
more  interested  in  the  work  as  I  proceeded, 
and  from  time  to  time  I  would  read  a 
chapter  to  Uncle  Sam.  When  I  got 
through  the  original  story  I  was  so  amused 
with  the  writing  of  it  that  it  occurred  to 
me  that  I  might  as  well  make  Mr.  Isaacs 
fall  in  love  with  an  English  girl,  and  then 
I  kept  on  writing  to  see  what  would  happen. 
176 


F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 

By  and  by  I  remembered  a  mysterious 
Buddhist  whom  I  had  met  once  in  India, 
and  so  I  introduced  him,  still  further  to 
complicate  matters.  I  went  to  Newport  to 
visit  my  aunt,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe, 
while  I  was  in  the  midst  of  the  story,  and 
continued  it  there.  It  was  on  June  13, 
1882,  while  in  her  home,  that  I  finished 
the  last  chapter  of  '  Mr.  Isaacs,'  and,  Uncle 
Sam  appearing  in  Newport  at  that  time,  I 
read  him  the  part  of  the  story  which  he 
had  not  heard.  *  You  will  give  it  to  me,' 
he  said,  *  and  I  shall  try  to  find  a  publisher.' 
He  had  for  many  years  frequented  the 
bookstore  of  Macmillan,  and  was  well  ac 
quainted  with  the  elder  George  Brett.  He 
took  the  manuscript  to  Mr.  Brett,  who  for 
warded  it  to  the  English  house,  and  in  a 
short  time  it  was  accepted. 

"Having  tasted   blood,   I    began,   very 
soon  after  finishing  *  Mr.  Isaacs,'  to  write 

177 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

another  story  for  my  own  amusement,  '  Dr. 
Claudius.'  Late  in  November  I  was  ad 
vised  by  the  Messrs.  Macmillan  that  in 
order  to  secure  an  English  copyright,  as 
well  as  an  American  copyright,  I  must  be 
on  English  soil  on  the  day  of  publication. 
So  I  went  to  St.  John,  New  Brunswick, 
where  I  had  a  very  pleasant  time,  and  con 
tinued  to  write  the  story  of  *  Dr.  Claudius/ 
which  I  finished  in  December.  *  Mr. 
Isaacs '  was  published  on  December  6,  and 
I,  of  course,  knew  nothing  about  its  recep 
tion.  However,  toward  the  end  of  the 
month  I  started  on  my  return  journey  to 
the  United  States,  and  when  I  arrived  in 
Boston  on  the  day  before  Christmas,  and 
stepped  out  of  the  train,  I  was  surprised 
beyond  measure  to  find  the  railway  news 
stand  almost  covered  with  great  posters  an 
nouncing  '  Mr.  Isaacs.'  The  next  morning, 
at  my  hotel,  I  found  a  note  awaiting  me 
178 


F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 

from  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  then  editor 
of  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  asking  me  for  an 
interview,  at  which  he  proposed  that  I  write 
a  serial  for  his  magazine.  I  felt  confident 
then,  and  do  now,  that  *  Dr.  Claudius ' 
would  not  be  a  good  serial  story.  How 
ever,  I  promised  that  Mr.  Aldrich  should 
have  a  serial,  and  began  soon  after  to  write 
4  A  Roman  Singer,'  which  was  completed 
in  February,  1883." 

That  is  Mr.  Crawford's  own  story  of  his 
start  as  a  novelist,  told  to  us  nine  years 
ago  in  a  Boston  hotel.  The  original  of 
Mr.  Isaacs  was  a  diamond  dealer  in  Simla 
named  Jacobs.  We  have  heard  it  related 
that  the  chief  figure  in  "  A  Roman  Singer  " 
was  partly  sketched  from  a  musician  now 
resident  in  Boston,  whom  the  novelist  had 
known  intimately  in  Rome.  The  Amer 
ican  scenery  of  "Dr.  Claudius"  was,  of 
course,  fresh  in  the  author's  mind. 

179 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Mr.  Crawford  said  last  year :  "  What  a 
novelist  needs  in  order  to  succeed  is  energy 
above  all  else.  But  he  also  needs  to  be 
very  poor.  No  man  with  money  will  work 
hard  enough  when  he  is  young  to  succeed. 
He  needs  to  begin  early,  work  hard,  and  sit 
long  in  one  place.  If  he  has  money  he 
won't  sit  long  in  one  place."  Mr.  Crawford 
had  no  money  when  he  started,  but  he  had 
abundant  energy,  and  he  could  sit  for  a 
day  in  one  place.  Hence  his  success.  In 
"  The  Three  Fates  "  the  close  reader  will 
discern  a  glimpse  of  the  foundation  of  Mr. 
Crawford's  literary  career. 

In  May,  1883,  the  rising  author  went 
back  to  Italy,  where  he  wrote  "To  Lee 
ward  "  and  "  Saracinesca."  The  next  year 
he  spent  in  Constantinople,  and  there  he 
was  married  to  Miss  Elizabeth  Berdan,  the 
daughter  of  General  Berdan.  In  1885  he 
settled  permanently  at  Sorrento.  "  Villa 
180 


F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 

Crawford,"  his  home,  stands  on  a  high 
bluff,  overlooking  the  B  ay  of  Naples.  There, 
in  a  room  padded  to  keep  out  sound,  the 
author  of  "  Mr.  Isaacs  "  has  done  most  of 
his  literary  work  for  the  last  fifteen  years. 
Mr.  Crawford  has  frequently  been  called 
"  a  born  novelist,"  and  we  have  yet  to  find 
a  critic  who,  judging  him  by  all  that  he 
has  done,  is  inclined  to  deny  him  the  right 
to  that  high  title.  His  dialogue  is  vivid, 
his  problems,  as  a  rule,  logically  worked 
out,  his  dramatic  situations  strong  and 
timely.  Not  all  his  works,  however,  are  of 
even  power  or  attractiveness;  and  no  one 
recognizes  this  fact  more  clearly  than  the 
novelist  himself.  He  has  said  that  the 
book  which  he  enjoyed  writing  most  is 
"Mr.  Isaacs";  the  book  which  has  for 
him  the  most  reality  is  "Pietro  Ghisleri," 
and  the  book  of  the  most  polish  is  "  Zoro 
aster."  In  years  gone  by  "Zoroaster'" 

181 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

was  studied  in  the  English  departments  of 
many  colleges. 

"  I  believe,"  said  Mr.  Crawford,  last  year, 
"  that  the  novelist  is  the  result  of  a  de 
mand.  Consequently,  I  believe  that  it  is 
the  province  of  the  novel  to  amuse,  to  cul 
tivate,  mainly  to  please.  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  novel  should  instruct.  The  story 
is  the  great  thing.  Therefore,  I  do  not 
believe  in  problem  novels,  or  what  they  call 
realism.  It  is  disagreeable  to  the  people." 
Yet,  in  his  thirty-six  works,  he  has  said,  to 
use  his  own  words,  some  "pretty  tall 
things." 

Mr.  Crawford  attributes  much  of  his  skill 
in  writing  English  to  the  letters  which  his 
mother  used  to  write  to  him  when  he  was 
away  at  school.  After  she  had  married  Mr. 
Terry,  her  home  in  Rome,  the  Palazzo 
Odescalchi,  became  the  meeting-place  of 
many  brilliant  men  and  women.  Artists, 
182 


F.  MAKION  CRAWFORD 

poets  and  literarians  crowded  her  house 
every  Wednesday  afternoon,  and  this  choice 
admiration  of  her  ended  only  with  her  death. 
Of  French,  German,  and,  of  course  Italian, 
her  brilliant  son  is  as  sure  a  master  as  he 
is  of  English ;  he  writes  Turkish  and  Rus 
sian  readily,  and  he  converses  fluently  in 
most  of  the  Eastern  tongues.  His  recrea 
tion  is  yachting.  Indeed  he  holds  a  ship 
master's  certificate  entitling  him  to  navigate 
sailing  vessels  on  the  high  seas.  Five  years 
ago  he  proved  his  seamanship  by  navi 
gating  his  yacht,  an  old  New  York  pilot 
boat,  across  the  seas  to  Sorrento. 

All  in  all,  a  delightful  and  accomplished 
author  and  gentleman-at-large. 


183 


1'lioto  by  Hollmger,  N.  Y 


JAMES    LANE    ALLEN. 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 


jj  FEW  novelists  know  the  world 
f-1  which  renews  its  youth  every 
-^  -*-  spring  and  that  dies  every  autumn, 
as  intimately  as  Thoreau  knew  it.  One  of 
these  novelists  is  Thomas  Hardy,  whose 
description  of  Egdon  Heath  in  "  The  Re 
turn  of  the  Native "  has  long  been  in  use 
as  a  model  in  the  English  Department  at 
Harvard.  One  of  these  also  is  James  Lane 
Allen,  the  Kentucky  schoolmaster. 

The  chapter  entitled  "  Hemp  "  in  "  The 
Reign  of  Law,"  contains  abundant  evidence 
of  this  loving  power.  Here  is  a  random 
choice : 

"  One  day  something  is  gone  from  earth 
and  sky :  Autumn  has  come,  season  of 
scales  and  balances,  when  the  earth,  brought 

185 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

to   judgment  for   its  fruits,  says,  'I  have 
done  what  I  could  —  now  let  me  rest ! ' 

"  Fall !  —  and  everywhere  the  sights  and 
sounds  of  falling.  In  the  woods,  through 
the  cool  silvery  air,  the  leaves,  so  indispen 
sable  once,  so  useless  now.  Bright  day 
after  bright  day,  dripping  night  after  drip 
ping  night,  the  never-ending  filtering  or 
gusty  fall  of  leaves.  The  fall  of  walnuts, 
dropping  from  bare  boughs  with  muffled 
boom  into  the  deep  grass.  The  fall  of  the 
hickory-nut,  rattling  noisily  down  through 
the  scaly  limbs  and  scattering  its  hulls 
among  the  stones  of  the  brook  below.  The 
fall  of  buckeyes,  rolling  like  balls  of  mahog 
any  into  the  little  dust  paths  made  by 
sheep,  in  the  hot  months,  when  they  had 
sought  those  roofs  of  leaves.  The  fall  of 
acorns,  leaping  out  of  their  matted  green 
cups  as  they  strike  the  rooty  earth.  The 
fall  of  red  haw,  persimmon,  and  pawpaw, 
186 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

and  the  odorous  wild  plum  in  its  valley 
thickets.  The  fall  of  all  seeds  whatsoever 
of  the  forest,  now  made  ripe  in  their  high 
places  and  sent  back  to  the  ground,  there 
to  be  folded  in  against  the  time  when  they 
shall  rise  again  as  the  living  generations ; 
the  homing,  downward  flight  of  the  seeds 
in  the  many-colored  woods  all  over  the 
quiet  land." 

Mr.  Mabie,  writing  once  in  The  Outlook, 
dwelt  on  what  has  been  called  the  "  land 
scape  beauty  "  of  Mr.  Allen's  work.  "  No 
American  novelist,"  he  said  "has  so  im 
bedded  his  stories  in  Nature  as  has  James 
Lane  Allen ;  and  among  English  novels  one 
recalls  only  Mr.  Hardy's  three  classics  of 
pastoral  England,  and  among  French  novel 
ists  George  Sand  and  Pierre  Loti.  Nature 
furnishes  the  background  of  many  charm 
ing  American  stories,  and  finds  delicate  or 
effective  remembrance  in  the  hands  of 

1ST 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

writers  like  Miss  Jewett  and  Miss  Murfree ; 
but  in  Mr.  Allen's  romances  Nature  is  not 
behind  the  action;  she  is  involved  in  it. 
Her  presence  is  everywhere ;  her  influence 
streams  through  the  story ;  the  deep  and 
prodigal  beauty  which  she  wears  in  rural 
Kentucky  shines  on  every  page;  the  tre 
mendous  forces  which  sweep  through  her 
disclose  their  potency  in  human  passion  and 
impulse  .  .  ." 

And  when  James  MacArthur  was  edit 
ing  The  Bookman  he  said :  "  Poetry,  '  the 
breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge,' 
according  to  Wordsworth,  *  the  impassioned 
expression  which  is  in  the  countenance  of 
all  science,' — that  poetry  irrespective  of 
rhyme  and  metrical  arrangement  which  is 
as  immortal  as  the  heart  of  man,  is  distinc 
tive  in  Mr.  Allen's  work  from  the  first 
written  page.  Like  Minerva  issuing  full- 
formed  from  the  head  of  Jove,  Mr.  Allen 
188 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

issues  from  his  long  years  of  silence  and 
seclusion  a  perfect  master  of  his  art — un 
failing  in  its  inspiration,  unfaltering  in  its 
classic  accent."  It  was  Mr.  Mac  Arthur, 
who,  speaking  of  "  The  Choir  Invisible," 
said  that  "it  would  be  difficult  to  recall 
any  other  novel  since  *  The  Scarlet  Letter' 
that  has  touched  the  same  note  of  greatness, 
or  given  to  one  section  of  our  national  life, 
as  Hawthorne's  classic  did  to  another,  a 
voice  far  beyond  singing." 

Mr.  MacArthur's  remark  that  Mr.  Allen 
came  forth  from  "  his  long  years  of  silence 
and  seclusion  a  perfect  master  of  his  art " 
is  largely  true.  Although  born  about  half 
a  century  ago,  it  was  not  until  1884  that 
he  settled  down  to  writing.  Not  many  of 
our  distinguished  writers  passed  thirty  be 
fore  tasting  the  bitter-sweet  fruit  of  author 
ship. 

Mr.  Allen  was  born  on  a  farm  in  Fayette 

189 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

County,  Kentucky,  a  few  miles  from  Lex 
ington  ;  and  on  the  farm  he  spent  his  early 
childhood.  His  mother's  maiden  name  was 
Helen  Foster.  Her  parents,  who  were  of 
the  Scotch-Irish  stock  which  settled  in 
Pennsylvania  before  the  Revolution,  had 
found  a  permanent  home  in  Mississippi. 
On  his  father's  side  he  is  a  descendant  of 
the  Virginians  who  formed  the  Kentucky 
pioneers.  The  son  was  graduated  from 
Kentucky  University  —  which  has  been 
pictured  in  the  history  of  his  latest  hero, 
David, —  in  1872.  For  several  years  after 
ward  he  taught  in  district  schools,  at  first 
near  his  home,  and  later  in  Missouri.  Still 
later  he  became  a  private  tutor;  then  he 
took  a  professorship  in  his  alma  mater; 
and  at  length  he  brought  his  career  as  a 
teacher  to  a  close  while  at  Bethany  Col 
lege,  West  Virginia.  That  very  year, 
1884,  he  moved  to  New  York,  put  away 
190 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

his  text-books,  and  plunged  into  the  sea  of 
literature.  One  who  knew  him  in  those 
days  has  described  him  as  "  a  blond  young 
giant  with  a  magnificent  head  and  a  strong, 
kindly  face." 

From  the  day  of  his  decision  to  be  a 
writer  until  the  present  time  Mr.  Allen 
has  worked  industriously  and  successfully. 
Fifteen  years  ago  the  chief  literary  and 
critical  magazines  published  many  of  his 
essays,  and  from  time  to  time  his  short 
stories  appeared  in  Harper  s  Magazine  and 
The  Century  Magazine.  These  short  stories 
were  afterward  collected  and  published 
under  the  title  of  "Flute  and  Violin." 
Then  appeared  at  irregular  intervals  "  The 
Blue  Grass  Region  of  Kentucky,"  "A 
Kentucky  Cardinal"  and  its  sequel,  "After 
math,"  "  A  Summer  in  Arcady,"  "  The 
Choir  Invisible,"  and,  latest  of  all,  "  The 
Reign  of  Law." 

191 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

The  author's  high  reputation  was  firmly 
established  by  "  A  Kentucky  Cardinal " 
and  "  Aftermath."  "  In  these  two  books," 
said  one  critic,  looking  backward,  "  Nature 
was  intervoven  benignantly  with  the  hu 
man  nature  resting  on  her  bosom,  leading 
her  lover,  Adam  Moss,  with  gentle  influ 
ences  to  the  human  lover,  and,  when  be 
reft  of  human  love,  receiving  him  back  into 
her  healing  arms."  The  books  made  as 
deep  an  impression  upon  Englishmen  as 
upon  Americans;  indeed,  as  late  as  the 
spring  of  1900  the  London  Academy  de 
voted  a  page  to  a  flattering  and  most  sym 
pathetic  review  of  them.  The  gentle,  playful 
humor,  the  healthy  joyousness,  the  rare  ten 
derness  displayed  by  Mr.  Allen  in  these  two 
books,  are  irresistible.  Months,  and  even 
years,  after  laying  the  books  down,  the 
reader  must  remember  the  many  delightful 
sketches  of  which  they  are  made. 
192 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

"  And  while  I  am  watching  the  birds, 
they  are  watching  me.  Not  a  little  fop 
among  them,  having  proposed  and  been  ac 
cepted,  but  perches  on  a  limb,  and  has  the 
air  of  putting  his  hands  mannishly  under 
his  coat-tails  and  crying  out  to  me, '  Hello  I 
Adam,  what  were  you  made  for?'  'You 
attend  to  your  business,  and  I  '11  attend  to 
mine/  I  answer,  'You  have  one  May;  I 
have  twenty-five  I '  He  didn  't  wait  to 
hear.  He  caught  sight  of  a  pair  of  clear 
brown  eyes  peeping  at  him  out  of  a  near 
tuft  of  leaves,  and  sprang  thither  with  open 
arms  and  the  sound  of  a  kiss." 

What  charming  sport!  What  uncom 
mon  perception!  And  here  is  one  of  his 
choice,  frank,  bucolic  sentiments: 

"  The  longer  I  live  here  the  better  satis 
fied  I  am  in  having  pitched  my  earthly 
camp-fire,  gypsylike,  on  the  edge  of  a  town, 
keeping  it  on  one  side,  and  the  green  fields, 

193 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

lanes  and  woods  on  the  other.  Each,  in 
turn,  is  to  me  as  a  magnet  to  the  needle. 
At  times  the  needle  of  my  nature  points 
towards  the  country.  On  that  side  every 
thing  is  poetry.  I  wander  over  field  and 
forest,  and  through  me  runs  a  glad  current 
of  feeling  that  is  like  a  clear  brook  across 
the  meadows  of  May.  At  others  the  needle 
veers  round,  and  I  go  to  town  —  to  the 
massed  haunts  of  the  highest  animal  and 
cannibal.  That  way  nearly  everything  is 
prose.  I  can  feel  the  prose  rising  in  me 
as  I  step  along,  like  hair  on  the  back  of  a 
dog,  long  before  any  other  dogs  are  in 
sight.  And,  indeed,  the  case  is  much  that 
of  a  country  dog  come  to  town,  so  that 
growls  are  in  order  at  every  corner.  The 
only  being  in  the  universe  at  which  I  have 
ever  snarled,  or  with  which  I  have  rolled 
over  in  the  mud  and  fought  like  a  common 
cur,  is  Man." 
194 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

"  Summer  in  Arcady "  shocked  many 
who  had  fallen  in  love  with  the  pastoral 
simplicity  and  spiritual  delicacy  of  the  two 
preceding  books;  but  it  was  generally  ad 
mitted  that  the  book  showed  an  advance  in 
the  author's  powers,  particularly  in  his 
power  of  vivid  dialogue.  In  his  first  novel 
Mr.  Allen  had  written  that  "  The  simple, 
rural,  key-note  of  life  is  still  the  sweetest," 
and  a  change  to  another  key-note,  tremu 
lous  with  pathos  and  tragedy,  surprised  the 
reading  public ;  but  the  opinion  that  it  was 
likely  to  prove  a  stepping-stone  to  higher 
things  found  general  favor.  Nor  was  this 
opinion  unsound,  for  "  The  Choir  Invisible  " 
lifted  its  author  for  the  time  above  the 
heads  of  all  his  contemporaries. 

Both  here  and  in  England  the  book  fairly 
leaped  to  success;  both  here  and  in  Eng 
land  it  was  praised  almost  unqualifiedly. 
An  American  critic,  writing  of  it,  said  : 

195 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

"Mr.  Allen  stands  today  in  the  front  rank 
of  American  novelists.  '  The  Choir  Invis 
ible'  will  solidify  a  reputation  already  es 
tablished  and  bring  into  clear  light  his  rare 
gifts  as  an  artist.  For  this  latest  story  is 
as  genuine  a  work  of  art  as  has  come  from 
an  American  hand."  An  English  critic 
noted  that  it  was  "  highly  praised,  and  with 
reason."  "It  is  written,"  he  said,  "with 
singular  delicacy,  and  has  an  old-world  fra 
grance  which  seems  to  come  from  the 
classics  we  keep  in  lavender." 

The  book  succeeded  so  immensely  that 
an  attempt  was  made  to  dramatize  it,  but 
the  attempt  failed.  The  atmosphere  of  the 
book  proved  to  be  too  ethereal,  too  spir 
itual,  for  dramatization. 

That  "The  Choir  Invisible"  solidified 

Mr.  Allen's  reputation  was  demonstrated 

by  the  eagerness  of  the  demand  for  "  The 

Reign  of  Law."     In  some  respects  this  is 

196 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

Mr.  Allen's  greatest  work :  it  reveals  even 
a  deeper  knowledge  of  nature  than  he  ever 
revealed  before,  and  it  deals  more  intimately 
with  things  which  have  revolved  around 
his  own  career. 

Fame  has  little  to  do  with  the  sale  of 
books.  If  "The  Kentucky  Cardinal," 
"  The  Choir  Invisible,"  and  «  The  Reign 
of  Law"  had  not  been  sold  by  the  thou 
sands,  Mr.  Allen's  fame  would  still  be  of 
more  than  transient  quality.  There  is 
nothing  ephemeral  about  these  stories : 
they  are,  strictly  speaking,  a  part  of  our 
classical  literature.  The  vividness  of  the 
pictures  will  always  be  fresh  and  inter 
esting. 

Taking  too  literally  Mr.  Allen's  remark 
in  "  The  Reign  of  Law"  that  Kentucky 
University  is  a  ruin  and  will  always 
remain  a  ruin,  the  reading  public  has 
generally  decided,  we  have  found,  that  the 

197 


LITTLE  PILGEIMAGES 

university,  the  author's  alma  mater,  does  not 
exist.  It  does  exist,  but,  apparently,  not  in 
the  condition  in  which  the  author  would 
have  it.  Before  "  The  Reign  of  Law"  had 
been  long  on  the  market,  he  and  the  president 
of  Kentucky  University  fell  into  a  contro 
versy  which  makes  an  interesting  chapter 
in  the  academic  side  of  the  history  of  the 
Blue  Grass  State. 

Mr.  Allen  works  slowly  and  carefully,  as 
may  be  inferred  from  the  number  and  the 
character  of  his  books.  And  he  lives 
quietly,  modestly.  He  is  not  in  the  least 
given  to  the  exploitation  of  his  habits  and 
his  manners,  even  so  far  as  they  may  be  con 
nected  with  his  literary  work.  Little  has  ever 
been  heard  of  him  by  the  thousands  who 
hurry  to  read  his  books,  and  who  read  them 
only  to  praise  him.  Some  time  ago  his 
publishers  issued  a  brochure  dealing  with 
his  career,  and  the  vital  facts  contained  in 
198 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

it,  if  put  together,  would  not  cover  more 
than  twenty  or  thirty  ordinary  lines. 

It  should  be  said  before  ending,  however, 
that  the  author  of  "  The  Reign  of  Law  "  is 
looked  up  to  almost  filially  by  the  younger 
writers  of  the  middle  West.  They  are 
never  weary  of  applauding  him  and  of  in 
dicating,  publicly  as  well  as  privately,  his 
extraordinary  reputation.  Traces  of  his 
style,  notably  as  it  appears  in  his  Corot-like 
pictures  of  nature,  may  be  found  in  their 
writings.  Indeed,  it  is  quite  likely  that 
nothing  would  please  one  of  these  fine  young 
men  more  than  to  have  it  said  of  his  work 
that  it  resembles  the  masterly  work  of  James 
Lane  Allen, 


199 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE  first 
came    into    national    prominence 
seventeen  years  ago  through   the 
publication  by  The  Century  Magazine  of  the 
short   story   called   "  Marse   Chan."      He 
received  eighty  dollars  for  the  story. 

A  few  years  ago,  in  conversation  with 
Mr.  Frank  G.  Carpenter,  the  author  re 
lated  the  incidents  which  led  to  the  writing 
of  "  Marse  Chan."  At  the  bottom  was  a 
letter  which  a  friend  had  shown  him. 
"  This  letter,"  said  Mr.  Page,  "  was  from 
an  illiterate  girl  in  Georgia  to  her  soldier 
sweetheart.  The  letter  was  poorly  written 
and  poorly  spelled,  but  full  of  pathos. 
The  girl  had,  it  seems,  trifled  with  the  man, 
but  after  he  had  left  for  the  war  she  had 

201 


LITTLE  PILGBIMAGES 

realized  her  great  love  for  him  and  written 
to  him.  She  wrote  :  4 1  know  I  have  treated 
you  mean.  I  ain't  never  done  right  with 
you  all  the  time.  When  you  asked  me  to 
marry  you,  I  laughed,  and  said  I  wouldn't 
have  you,  and  it  makes  me  cry  to  think  you 
are  gone  away  to  the  war.  Now,  I  want 
you  to  know  that  I  love  you,  and  I  want 
you  to  git  a  furlow  and  come  home  and  I'll 
marry  you.'  With  a  few  words  of  affec 
tion  the  letter  closed,  but  a  postscript  was 
added :  *  Don't  come  home  without  a  fur- 
low,  for  unless  you  come  home  honorable  I 
won't  marry  you.'  This  letter  was  re 
ceived  by  the  soldier  only  a  few  days  before 
the  battle  of  Seven  Pines,  and  after  he  was 
shot  it  was  found  in  his  breast  pocket,  just 
over  his  heart.  The  pathos  of  it  struck  me 
so  forcibly  that  out  of  it  came  the  story  of 
*  Marse  Chan.'  " 

Thomas    Nelson    Page   was    thirty-one 
202 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 

when  "  Marse  Chan"  appeared,  and  at  that 
time  his  shingle  was  new  outside  his  office 
in  Richmond.  Mr.  Page  was  born  in  Hano 
ver  County,  Virginia,  on  April  23,  1853, 
and  is  consequently  now  in  his  forty-ninth 
year.  A  description  of  the  house  in  which 
he  was  born  —  Oakland,  it  was  called  — 
may  be  found  in  "Two  Little  Confederates." 
On  both  sides  he  is  a  lineal  descendant  of 
Gen.  Thomas  Nelson,  one  of  the  signers  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  It  has 
been  said  that  there  is  scarcely  an  old  family 
in  all  Virginia  to  which  the  author  is  not  re 
lated  in  some  degree.  One  of  his  cousins  is 
the  Princess  Troubetskoy,  Amelie  Rives 
before  her  marriage,  whose  first  husband  was 
John  Armstrong  Chanler.  At  the  time  of 
the  birth  of  Thomas  the  Pages  were  compar 
atively  wealthy,  but  later,  during  the  war, 
they  lost  most  of  their  wealth.  Thomas's 
first  reading  lessons,  in  the  Waverley  novels, 

203 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

were  given  him  by  an  aunt,  who  also  taught 
him  to  read  the  Episcopal  prayer-book.  His 
education  was  interrupted  by  the  outbreak  of 
the  war,  for  his  father  accepted  a  commis 
sion  in  the  Confederate  army.  Occasionally 
the  boy  visited  his  father  in  camp,  when  the 
troops  were  on  the  road  from  Oakland  to 
Richmond.  Once  he  witnessed  a  bombard 
ment.  Happily,  he  was  old  enough  to  appre 
ciate  the  gossip  of  the  war  which  passed 
around  the  negro  cabins. 

Like  all  the  slaveholders,  the  Pages  were 
much  reduced  in  riches  when  the  war 
ended,  but,  nevertheless,  at  the  age  of  six 
teen,  Thomas  was  sent  to  Washington  and 
Lee  University.  Of  his  college  days  he 
once  said : 

"My  standing  was  not  high.  I  don't  know 

that  I  had  much  ambition  to  be  one  of  the 

first  honor  men.     At  any  rate,   I  got  no 

medals  of  any  kind.   I  suppose  I  was  a  fair 

204 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 

average  student,  but  I  hear  that  I  devoted 
myself  more  to  outside  reading  than  to  my 
studies.  I  was  a  member  of  the  literary 
society,  and  for  a  time  was  the  editor  of  the 
college  paper.  Contrary  to  the  usual  cus 
tom,  I  wrote  short  articles  instead  of  long 
essays,  and  from  this  got  the  nick-name  of 
'The  Shori^Article  Editor.'  I  wrote,  I 
suppose,  much  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
myself  in  print.  I  was  very  bashful  in 
those  days,  and  I  know  that  I  trembled 
when  I  first  got  up  to  speak  in  the  literary 
society.  I  had  a  chum  at  college  who  is 
now  one  of  the  most  famous  lawyers  of  the 
country.  He  excels  as  a  debater.  He  was 
also  bashful,  and  during  our  college  days  he 
joined  with  me  in  a  method  of  improving 
our  oratorical  powers.  We  would  get  to 
gether  in  a  room,  and,  having  closed  the 
doors,  would  debate  with  each  other,  upon 
some  question.  One  would  stand  on  one 

205 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

side  of  the  table  and  one  on  the  other  and 
we  would  declaim  away,  each  having  a  fif 
teen  minutes'  speech  and  a  like  time  for 
answers.  This  practice  helped  me  materially 
in  my  work  as  a  lawyer." 

After  his  graduation  from  Washington 
and  Lee  University,  Mr.  Page  secured  em 
ployment  as  a  teacher  in  a  private  school  in 
Kentucky,  not  far  from  Louisville.  There 
he  taught  for  a  year,  and  he  says  that  he 
enjoyed  it  very  much.  He  kept  his  pen  at 
work  steadily.  The  influential  paper  in 
the  part  of  the  country  where  he  was  teach 
ing,  was,  of  course,  The  Louisville  Courier- 
Journal.  The  young  teacher  was  intensely 
interested  in  Ik  Marvel's  books,  and  he 
wrote  some  essays  in  imitation  of  Marvel 
and  sent  them  to  the  Courier- Journal. 
They  were  rejected.  From  what  he  has 
said  since,  their  rejection  was  not  a  source 
of  much  discouragement  to  him. 
206 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 

At  the  end  of  a  year  the  rebuffed  essay 
ist  returned  to  his  home  in  Virginia,  and, 
soon  after,  deciding  to  study  law,  he  entered 
the  law  school  of  the  University  of  Virginia. 
Greatly  to  his  credit,  he  got  his  degree  in 
a  year.  Meantime,  however,  he  kept  up 
his  interest  in  literature.  While  at  the 
University  of  Virginia  he  contributed  to 
the  college  paper.  It  was  also  his  habit, 
while  at  home,  to  write  stories  on  slates 
for  the  entertainment  of  his  friends,  and 
erase  the  stories  after  he  had  read  them. 
At  school,  too,  he  began  to  write  stories  in 
the  negro  dialect,  and  he  continued  this 
practice  in  his  law  office  in  Richmond.  At 
his  office  he  wrote  the  first  of  his  works  ac 
cepted  by  the  magazines,  a  poem  called 
"Unc'  Gabe's  White  Folks,"  which  was 
published  in  Scribner's  in  1876.  He  re 
ceived  fifteen  dollars  for  it.  He  was  very 
proud  of  that  unpretentious  check.  Later 

207 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

he  wrote  a  historical  article  relating  to  the 
centennial  celebration  in  old  Yorktown,  and 
then  he  sent  out  his  first  story,  "  Marse 
Chan."  It  was  paid  for  promptly,  but, 
like  many  another  story  sent  to  the  maga 
zines,  particularly  stories  from  unknown 
authors,  it  remained  unpublished  for  several 
years.  Finally,  overcome  by  impatience, 
the  author  wrote  to  ascertain  what  had  be 
come  of  it,  and  shortly  afterward  he  received 
a  proof  of  it.  With  its  publication  in  1884 
came  instant  popularity. 

But  at  no  time  previous  to  his  moving  to 
Washington  was  literature  first  in  Page's 
mind.  In  the  beginning,  at  Richmond,  he 
wrote  only  at  night,  when  his  day's  work 
was  done ;  and  for  a  time  he  actually  ceased 
writing  fiction  entirely  lest  it  might  inter 
fere  with  the  practice  of  his  profession. 
For,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  has  been  a  very 
successful  lawyer.  Six  months  after  he 
208 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 

had  settled  down  in  Richmond  he  was  able 
to  support  himself  with  his  earnings  at  the 
bar,  and  during  the  eighteen  years  which 
followed,  that  is,  up  to  the  time  of  his 
settling  down  in  Washington,  his  income 
was  chiefly  from  law. 

So,  it  was  some  time  before  "Marse 
Chan"  was  succeeded  by  "Meh  Lady," 
«Unc'  Edinburgh  Drowndin',"  "Polly" 
and  "  Ole  '  Stracted."  It  was  said  in  those 
days  that  the  stories  were  like  variations  on 
a  single  theme;  but  we  are  inclined  to 
agree  with  the  critic  who  said :  "  For  this 
we  feel  no  disposition  to  quarrel  with  Mr. 
Page,  being  eager  to  hear  the  tale  as  often 
as  he  may  find  ways  to  tell  it,  and  grateful 
to  him  for  such  beautiful  and  faithful 
pictures  of  a  society  now  become  portion 
and  parcel  of  the  irrevocable  past."  To 
Mr.  Page  and  his  equally  delightful  con 
temporary,  Mr.  Joel  Chandler  Harris,  the 

209 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

reading  public  is  indebted  for  no  small 
number  of  the  most  charming  features  of 
American  literature. 

It  may  please  those  who  enjoy  particu 
lars  to  know  that  the  popular  writer  re 
gards  "  Unc'  Edinburg's  Drowndin',''  which 
was  first  to  follow  "  Marse  Chan,"  as  his 
best  picture  of  Virginia  life.  Mr.  Page,  in 
1886,  married  Miss  Anne  Seddon  Bruce, 
the  daughter  of  Charles  Bruce  of  Charlotte 
County,  Virginia,  largely  for  whose  enter 
tainment  he  had  written  his  early  stories ; 
and  before  the  death  of  Mrs.  Page  in  1888 
Mr.  Page  had  written  "  Meh  Lady "  and 
had  published  "  In  Ole  Virginia,"  a  collec 
tion  of  his  works,  all  in  dialect. 

In  those  days,  by  the  way,  his  work  was 
often  compared  by  the  critics  with  the 
work  of  Mr.  Harris.  Perhaps  the  fairest 
comparison  was  made  by  Mr.  Coleman, 
who  admired  the  two  authors  quite  equally. 
210 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 

"  Mr.  Page,"  said  the  critic,  "  enjoys  the 
reputation  of  having  written  the  most  ex 
quisite  story  of  the  war  that  has  yet 
appeared  ("  Marse  Chan").  In  compari 
son  with  the  works  of  Joel  Chandler 
Harris,  though  both  authors  deal  with  the 
negro,  the  one  in  no  wise  interferes  with  the 
proper  appreciation  of  the  other.  In  Uncle 
Remus  Mr.  Harris  has  given  us  the  truer 
insight  into  the  character  of  the  type  to 
which  he  belongs,  while  the  venerable 
family  servant  is  somewhat  idealized  by 
Mr.  Page,  and,  moreover,  is  made  to  tell  a 
story  possessing  a  value  and  interest  of  its 
own  not  entirely  dependent  upon  the  per 
sonality  of  the  narrator  and  his  race  pecu 
liarities.  In  the  matter  of  dialect,  Mr.  Page 
has  the  advantage,  though  this  may  be  due, 
in  part,  to  the  difference  between  the  Vir 
ginia  negro  and  his  brother  of  Georgia." 

The  Virginian  has  portrayed  the  sweeter 

211 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

side  of  the  old  slavery  days,  in  direct  con 
trast  to  Mrs.  Stowe's  picture  of  the  harsher 
side.  In  the  master  he  has  delineated  for 
bearance,  confidence,  protection ;  in  the 
slave,  respect,  devotion  and  fidelity.  With 
out  a  scruple  he  has  felt  constrained  to  make 
one  of  his  characters  say  of  the  days  before 
the  war :  "  Dem  wuz  good  ole  times,  mars- 
ter  —  de  bes'  Sam  ever  see  I  De  wuz,  in 
fac' !  Niggers  did  n'  hed  nothin'  't  all  to 
do  —  jes'  hed  to  'ten'  to  de  feedin'  an' 
cleanin'  de  hosses,  an'  doin'  what  de 
marster  tell  'em  to  do ;  an'  when  dey  wuz 
sick,  dey  had  things  sent  'em  out  de  house, 
an'  de  same  doctor  came  to  see  'em  whar 
'ten'  to  de  white  folks  when  dey  wuz  po'ly. 
Dyah  war  n'  no  trouble  nor  nuthin." 

A  few  years  ago  Mr.  Page  was  asked  if 
he  wrote  rapidly.     "  Yes  and  no,"  he  re 
plied.     "  I  write  the  first  draft  as  rapidly 
as  I  can  and  then  go  over  it  very  carefully 
212 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 

in  the  revision.  I  try  to  simplify  my  writ 
ings  as  much  as  possible.  The  more  simple 
it  is,  I  think,  the  better  it  is.  I  find,  how 
ever,  that  the  revision  often  takes  away  the 
spirit  from  the  first  draft.  I  lay  away  the 
manuscript,  and  looking  at  it  several  weeks 
later,  I  can  see  that  the  first  draft  is  truer 
to  nature  than  the  more  stilted  revision.  I 
think  I  do  more  careful  work  now  than 
I  have  done  in  the  past.  My  ideal  is  far 
above  anything  I  have  ever  done,  and  I 
sometimes  despair  of  approaching  it.  There 
is  one  thing  I  do,  however,  which  I  think 
is  a  good  plan  for  any  writer.  That  is,  I 
always  give  the  best  I  have  in  me  to  the 
story  which  I  am  writing.  I  do  not  save 
anything  which  I  think  might  perhaps  be 
of  use  to  me  in  the  future.  The  cream,  if 
you  could  use  that  expression,  always  goes 
to  the  present." 

In  1891  the  author  of  "  Marse  Chan " 

213 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

left  Richmond  and  went  to  New  York  to 
succeed  Charles  Dudley  Warner  in  the 
conduct  of  "  The  Drawer "  in  Harper's 
Monthly,  Mr.  Warner  succeeding  Mr.  How- 
ells,  who  at  that  time  left  Harper's  for  the 
Cosmopolitan,  in  the  conduct  of  "  The 
Study."  That  same  year  Mr.  Page  ap 
peared  as  a  public  reader.  Two  years 
later  he  married  Mrs.  Henry  Field  of 
Chicago,  a  granddaughter  of  Governor 
Barbour  of  Virginia,  and  since  then,  for  the 
most  part,  he  has  lived  and  worked  in 
Washington.  By  far  his  most  ambitious 
work  is  "  Red  Rock,"  a  novel  which  has 
done  much  to  affect  favorably  the  old  atti 
tude  of  the  North  toward  the  South. 

Not  many  of  our  writers  rest  their  fame 
on  fewer  works. 


214 


RICHARD    HARDING    DAVIS. 


RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 


A  GREAT  many  persons,  indeed,  a 
/J   great   many  critics,  have    called 
-^  Richard  Harding    Davis   superfi 

cial.  They  obviously  had  one  thing  in  mind 
and  said  another.  Perhaps  they  may  have 
meant  to  say  that  sometimes  Mr.  Davis 
dealt  in  superficialities.  We  lean  toward 
Professor  Harry  Thurston  Peck's  opinion. 
"Mr.  Davis,  in  fact,"  he  says,  "because 
of  the  predominance  in  him  of  the  journal 
istic  motive,  is  a  photographer  rather  than 
an  artist;  but  he  is  a  very  skillful  and 
adept  photographer." 

No  person  of  superficial  temperament 
could  have  described  with  so  much  humor 
Van  Bibber's  attempt  to  practice  economy, 
or  could  have  given  us  the  affecting  con- 

215 


LITTLE  PILGEIMAGES 

elusion  of  "  Princess  Aline,"  or  could  have 
written  many  paragraphs  of  "  The  Exiles." 
No  sympathetic  human  being  who  has  ever 
read  "  The  Exiles  "  will  forget  the  picture 
of  the  outlawed  boodle  alderman  in  Tangier, 
saying  to  a  visitor  about  to  return  to  New 
York  with  a  clean  conscience  and  a  strong 
hunger  to  see  the  familiar  sights : 

"  *  I  '11  tell  you  what  you  can  do  for  me, 
Holcombe.  Some  night  I  wish  you  would  go 
down  to  Fourteenth  Street,  some  night  this 
spring,  when  the  boys  are  sitting  out  on  the 
steps  in  front  of  the  Hall,  and  just  take  a 
drink  for  me  at  Ed.  Lally's ;  just  for  luck. 
Will  you  ?  That 's  what  I  'd  like  to  do.  I 
don  't  know  nothing  better  than  Fourteenth 
Street  of  a  summer  evening,  with  all  the 
people  crowding  into  Pastor's,  on  one  side  of 
the  Hall,  and  the  Third  Avenue  L-cars  run 
ning  by  on  the  other.  That 's  a  gay  sight, 
ain  't  it  now  ?  With  all  the  girls  coming 
216 


RICHARD  HARDINGDAVIS 

in  and  out  of  Theiss's,  and  the  sidewalks 
crowded.  One  of  them  warm  nights  when 
they  have  to  have  the  windows  open,  and 
you  can  hear  the  music  in  at  Pastor's,  and 
the  audience  clapping  their  hands.  That's 
great,  isn't  it?  Well,'  he  laughed  and 
shook  his  head,  '  I  '11  be  back  there  some 
day,  won  't  I,'  he  said,  wistfully,  *  and  hear 
it  for  myself?'" 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  in  fiction  a  more 
affecting  picture  done  with  fewer  strokes 
and  with  closer  fidelity  to  human  nature. 
It  is  a  picture  which  must  strike  the  atten 
tive  reader,  and  particularly  the  attentive 
New  York  reader,  full  on  the  heart  strings. 

Mr.  Davis  has  the  habit  of  looking  at 
the  odd  things  in  life.  Without  this  habit 
no  man  can  be  a  first-class  reporter;  and 
our  author  has  proved  himself  a  first-class 
reporter  in  many  parts  of  the  world  and 
for  many  papers. 

217 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Like  every  well-trained  reporter,  Mr. 
Davis  is  continually  "seeing  things."  As 
he  said  to  his  friend  Mr.  Sangree,  some 
months  ago :  "  I  never  walk  one  city  block 
that  I  do  not  see  twenty  things  to  interest 
me.  I  tire  my  friends  sometimes  by  point 
ing  them  out.  Their  minds  run  in  differ 
ent  channels.  But  this  ability  to  see  things 
is  my  greatest  joy  in  life,  incidentally  my 
living.  I  cultivated  it  when  I  began  re 
porting,  and  to  this  day  if  I  see  a  man  turn 
in  a  car  to  look  out  the  window  I  uncon 
sciously  turn  with  him.  He  may  have 
observed  something  that  escaped  me  — 
something  that  contains  an  element  of 
human  interest,  and  I  hold  no  effort  wasted 
that  may  add  to  this  general  cargo  of  life's 
impressions." 

No  able  reporter  could  have  worked  long 
under  Charles  A.  Dana  and  escaped  the  ob 
jective  habit.     In  fact,  a  story  which  Mr. 
218 


RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

Sangree  tells  of  his  friend's  experience  on 
The  Evening  Sun  illustrates  the  point. 

"  At  eight  o'  clock  one  spring  morning," 
says  Mr.  Sangree,  "the  blotter  at  police 
headquarters  recorded  a  trifling  fire  on  the 
East  Side.  News  being  dull,  Davis  was 
sent  to  cover  it.  He  found  a  rickety  tene 
ment  house  in  which  fire  had  little  more 
than  singed  the  top  floor.  The  crowd  had 
left,  a  few  ashes  were  smouldering,  and  the  in 
surance  adjusters  were  examining  the  place. 

"  '  Nothing  here,?  said  the  policeman  on 
watch.  '  Only  five  hundred  dollars  damage 
and  a  bum  lodger  asphyxiated.  He's  in 
that  room.' 

"  The  reporters  peeped,  saw  the  blacken 
ed  face  and  rigid  form,  a  man  unnamed  and 
forgotten  —  and  wrote  a  paragraph.  The 
Evening  Sun  reporter,  in  mousing  about,, 
saw  an  alarm  clock  by  the  dead  man's  side 
with  the  hand  pointing  to  seven  o'  clock. 

219 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

" *  What  time  did  you  break  in  here  ? ' 
he  asked. 

" '  Let  me  see,'  yawned  the  bluecoat ; 
1  Seven  o'  clock  it  was.  I  remember  be 
cause  that  alarm  was  going  off  just  as  I  got 
inside.' 

" '  That's  my  story,'  said  Davis,  and  he 
began  his  account,  touching  and  vivid,  sim 
ply  with:  'The  man  died  at  six-thirty. 
The  alarm  went  off  at  seven.  It  was  just 
half  an  hour  too  late.' ' 

"  What  impressed  me,"  said  the  author, 
discussing  the  story  subsequently,  "was 
that  impotent  alarm  clock  jangling  away 
when  the  owner  was  dead.  A  man's  exist 
ence  had  been  cut  off  because  that  fifty-cent 
clock  could  not  give  its  alarm  a  few  minutes 
earlier." 

This  illustrates  what  was  meant  when  we 
said  that  Mr.  Davis  takes  an  objective  view 
of  life.     His  experience  as  a  reporter  was 
220 


RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

invaluable  to  him  ;  and  he  took  Dr.  Hale's 
advice,  and  ended  the  experience  at  the 
right  time.  Doubtless  many  good  writers 
have  been  spoiled  by  indulging  too  long  in 
the  fascinations  of  newspaper  work. 

A  large  part  of  his  training  as  a  reporter 
the  creator  of  Van  Bibber  obtained  in 
his  native  city,  during  his  service  on  the 
Philadelphia  Press,  for  which  paper  he 
went  to  work  when  he  was  a  little  more 
than  twenty.  There  is  a  portrait  of  him 
taken  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  in  the 
disguise  in  which  he  worked  while  getting 
the  information  which  drove  the  nest  of 
thieves  out  of  Wood  street. 

While  Davis  was  working  for  the  Phila 
delphia  Press,  by  the  way,  he  and  his 
associates  in  the  reporters'  room  fell  in  love 
with  one  of  Stevenson's  thrilling  short 
stories,  "  A  Lodging  for  the  Night."  They 
could  not  restrain  their  admiration ;  so  they 

221 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

wrote  an  enthusiastic  letter  to  the  gentle 
sick  man  off  there  in  Samoa.  And  to  the 
spokesman  of  the  admiring  crew  Stevenson 
replied : 

Dear  Sir: 

Why,  thank  you  very  much  for  your  frank, 
agreeable  and  natural  letter.  It  is  certainly 
very  pleasant  that  all  you  young  fellows 
wholly  enjoy  my  work,  and  get  some  good 
out  of  it ;  and  it  was  very  kind  in  you  to 
write  and  tell  me  so.  The  tale  of  the  suicide 
is  excellently  droll;  and  your  letter,  you 
may  be  sure,  will  be  preserved.  If  you  are 
to  escape,  unhurt,  out  of  your  present  busi 
ness,  you  must  be  very  careful,  and  you  must 
find  in  your  heart  much  constancy.  The 
swiftly  done  work  of  the  journalist,  and  the 
cheap  finish  and  ready-made  methods  to 
which  it  leads,  you  must  try  to  counteract  in 
private  by  writing  with  the  most  considerate 
slowness  and  on  the  most  ambitious  models. 
And  when  I  say  '  writing  ' —  0,  believe  me, 
it  is  re-writing  that  I  have  chiefly  in  my 
222 


RICHARD  HARDING  DAYIS 

mind.     If  you  will  do  this  I  hope  to  hear  of 
you  some  day. 

Please  excuse  this  sermon  from 
Your  obliged 

ROBERT  Louis  STEVENSON. 

This  letter,  brought  to  light  a  short  while 
ago  by  Mr.  Sangree,  in  a  magazine  article, 
discloses  an  exchange  of  sentiments  credit 
able  to  all  the  correspondents  concerned. 

For  a  time  the  promising  journalist  was 
overmastered  by  an  ambition  to  be  an 
editor,  and  he  established  a  short-lived  dra 
matic  periodical  called  The  Stage.  In 
1889  he  reported  the  Johnstown  flood  for 
a  Philadelphia  paper,  and  then,  the  follow 
ing  summer,  went  abroad  with  the  All- 
Philadelphia  cricket  team.  Upon  his 
return  to  this  country,  New  York  charmed 
him,  and  there,  for  the  most  part,  he  has 
lived  ever  since.  At  first  he  was  connected 
with  The  Evening  Sun.  During  this  con- 

223 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

nection  he  wrote  his  delightful  "Van 
Bibber"  stories.  But  these  were  not  his 
first  stories.  His  first  stories  were  written 
while  he  was  editor  of  a  paper  at  Lehigh 
College,  in  his  student  days.  The  stories 
numbered  about  a  dozen,  and  Mr.  Davis 
collected  them  and  paid  ninety  dollars  to 
have  them  published  in  book  form.  The 
book  has  scarcely  ever  been  heard  of  since. 
Later,  while  at  Johns  Hopkins  University, 
he  wrote  his  first  accepted  story,  "  Richard 
Carr's  Baby,"  a  sort  of  foot-ball  tale, 
which  was  published  in  St.  Nicholas. 
However,  the  "  Van  Bibber  "  stories  were 
his  first  work  of  any  serious  account ;  they 
were  the  first  work  to  bring  him  popular- 
ity. 

After  the  "  Van  Bibber  "  sketches  came 

his  most  sparkling  gem,  "  Gallegher,"  a 

newspaper   story   which   was   refused    by 

three  editors  and  then  published,  with  im- 

224 


RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

mediate  success,  in  Scribners  Magazine. 
Later  appeared  in  quick  succession  "  The 
Other  Woman,"  "An  Unfinished  Story," 
•'  My  Disreputable  Friend,  Mr.  Raegan," 
and  the  other  short  stories  which  soon 
made  their  author's  name  familiar  to  the 
reading  public  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean. 

In  1890  Davis  became  editor  of  Harper's 
Weekly.  This  position  he  left  a  year  or 
so  later  to  travel  across  the  continent,  with 
"  The  West  Through  a  Car  Window  "  as 
the  result.  Then  he  went  to  London,  and 
described  the  life  there ;  and  then  he  went 
to  Egypt  and  wrote  "The  Rulers  of  the 
Mediterranean."  He  was  now  fairly  well 
started ;  and  since  then  his  pen  has  never 
been  idle. 

Since  Mr.  Davis's  advent  as  a  serious 
writer  of  fiction  he  has  been  subjected  on 
one  side  to  the  most  extravagant  praise  and 
on  the  other  to  the  most  merciless  censure. 

225 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

The  critics  on  both  sides  have  made  matters 
worse  by  dropping  the  subject  at  hand  and 
bringing  out  for  public  inspection  vast 
quantities  of  personal  anecdotes  about  the 
unfortunate  author,  most  of  which  stories 
are  probably  apocryphal.  In  fact,  at  one 
time  the  newspaper  comments  were  so 
vulgar  that  the  helpless  victim  said  to  a 
friend  who  visited  him  in  New  York :  "If 
I  thought  I  was  like  the  man  the  news 
papers  make  me  out  to  be,  I  would  not 
only  cut  my  own  acquaintance ;  I  'd  cut  my 
own  throat."  But,  so  far  as  the  public 
ever  found  out,  he  took  the  slings  and 
arrows  philosophically.  He  could  afford  to. 
One  by  one  his  new  works  have  prospered. 
It  was  at  the  height  of  this  hypercritical 
hostility  that,  in  1897,  Davis  was  suddenly 
missed.  About  the  same  time  the  stories 
in  the  London  Times  on  the  war  between 
Turkey  and  Greece  began  to  attract  uni- 
226 


RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

versal  attention.  The  Times,  said  one  of 
the  New  York  newspapers,  which  had 
shown  especial  bitterness  toward  its  for 
mer  reporter,  has  discovered  a  brilliant  war 
correspondent.  It  seemed  that  people  all 
over  the  world  were  asking,  Who  is  he? 
It  was  Mr.  Davis,  proving,  under  the  cloak 
of  the  Times'  traditional  anonymity  his 
right  to  be  respected  as  a  descriptive  writer 
of  the  first  quality.  He  repeated  this  suc 
cess  the  next  year  in  Cuba,  during  the 
Spanish  war,  when  his  extraordinary  skill 
in  the  description  of  picturesque  incidents 
was  favored  by  the  circumstance  that  the 
generals  and  admirals  themselves  were 
sending  home  virtually  all  the  news. 

When,  last  year,  Mr.  Davis  went  to 
South  Africa  it  was  commonly  expected 
that  he  would  take  sides  with  the  British. 
Never  was  public  expectation  more  emphat 
ically  at  fault.  In  a  moment  he  took  the 

227 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

measure  of  the  British  cause  and  the  Brit 
ish  tactics  ;  both  of  these  things  disgusted 
him.  He  put  Mr.  Kipling  himself  to 
shame  by  serving  "  the  God  of  Things  as 
They  Are  " ;  and  as  a  result  he  forfeited 
many  friendships  which  he  had  made  in 
England.  But  he  won  the  hearts  of  his 
countrymen.  His  courageous  honesty  de 
stroyed  in  this  country  the  last  vestige  of 
captious  hostility. 

To-day,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  just  at 
the  entrance  to  full-blown  life,  Mr.  Davis 
is  widely  admired  and  honored.  He  has 
pleased  the  light-hearted  with  his  pretty 
romantic  tales,  and  he  has  satisfied  the 
strong  of  heart  with  his  many  examples  of 
an  unerring  sense  of  the  true  comedy  and 
the  true  pathos  of  life,  and,  moreover,  of 
his  remarkable  personal  fearlessness.  Per 
haps  the  term  which  a  friend  applied  to 
him  is  most  fitting  —  perhaps  he  may  best 
228 


BICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

be  called  a  "  sublimated  reporter  "  °,  for 
your  sublimated  reporter  must  be  at  once 
an  imperturbable  philosopher  and  an  artist 
holding  the  mirror  up  to  nature. 

The  author's  marriage  to  Miss  Cecil 
Clark  of  Chicago,  at  Marion,  Massachusetts, 
on  May  4,  1899,  was  an  event  remarkable 
for  its  jollity.  Last  year  Mrs.  Davis  ac 
companied  her  husband  to  South  Africa. 
She  is  said  to  be  as  skillful  with  the  pencil 
as  he  is  with  the  pen. 


229 


Photo  by  Holhnger,  N.  Y. 

JOHN    KENDRICK    BANGS. 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 


A  DOZEN  years  or  so  ago,  when 

/-I  Mr.  Bangs  faced  at  home  an  audi- 
-^  ence,  which  had  gathered  to  hear 

his  address  on  "The  Evolution  of  the 
Humorist,"  he  said : 

"  I  was  born  in  and  have  resided  in 
Yonkers  for  a  number  of  years ;  I  have 
braved  the  perils  of  life  in  this  community, 
and  have  endured,  without  a  murmur,  the 
privations  common  to  all  of  us." 

A  modest  biography,  and  withal  an  illus 
tration  of  Mr.  Bangs's  philosophy.  He 
takes  things  as  they  come  —  and  leaves  his 
imprint  on  them.  Comparisons  of  skill 
aside,  no  man  could  do  more. 

John  Kendrick  Bangs  was  born  in 
Yonkers,  New  York,  in  May,  1862.  His 

231 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

father,  Francis  N.  Bangs,  was  a  prominent 
New  York  lawyer,  in  fact,  one  of  the  most 
prominent  lawyers  the  New  York  bar  has 
ever  known.  His  grandfather  was  the 
Rev.  Nathan  Bangs,  D.D.,  the  first  his 
torian  of  the  Methodist  Church  in  this 
country,  the  first  editor  of  a  Methodist 
paper,  and  for  many  years  president  of 
Wesleyan  University,  Middletown,  Con 
necticut. 

In  1883,  after  receiving  such  an  educa 
tion  as  any  New  York  boy  of  a  well-to-do 
New  York  family  receives,  young  Bangs 
was  graduated  with  the  degree  of  Bachelor 
of  Philosophy  from  the  School  of  Political 
Science  of  Columbia  University,  New  York. 
For  a  year  and  a  half  afterward  he  studied 
law  in  his  father's  office  —  studied  at 
"  long  range,"  as  he  has  said  himself.  But 
all  the  time  he  was  impatient  to  go  into 
literature.  "  I  was  more  of  a  fighter,"  he 
232 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

says,  "  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  a  man  has 
enough  battles  of  his  own  to  wage  without 
rushing  after  the  battles  of  other  people." 
Gradually  his  inherited  fondness  for  litera 
ture  smothered  his  zeal  as  a  student  of  law. 
While  contributing  in  his  undergraduate 
days  to  the  college  paper,  Acta  Columbiana, 
he  had  enjoyed  a  taste  of  literary  glory. 
So,  between  dips  into  his  father's  dry 
volumes,  he  wrote  little  sketches  in  his 
characteristic  vein.  These  tentative  works 
introduced  him  favorably  to  the  managers 
of  J/ife,  and,  late  in  1884,  he  became  asso 
ciated  with  Mr.  Mitchell  in  the  editorship 
of  that  entertaining  periodical.  In  addition 
to  his  editorial  work  he  undertook  to 
maintain  the  attractive  "By  the  Way" 
page,  and  to  this  valuable  feature  of  Life 
he  contributed  an  extraordinary  amount  of 
original  matter.  What  would  not  have 
been  asked  of  many  other  men  was  re- 

233 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

quested  of  the  new  humorist  in  the  most 
casual  manner,  for  he  quickly  proved  that, 
besides  possessing  a  keen  literary  instinct 
and  that  kindly  and  delightful  insight  into 
human  nature  which,  brought  together, 
double  the  value  of  a  comic  paper,  he  also 
possessed  remarkable  energy  and  power  of 
application. 

In  1887,  while  still  connected  with  Life, 
and  shortly  after  his  marriage,  young 
Bangs  went  abroad,  and  during  this  ab 
sence  from  editorial  work  his  first  book, 
"  Roger  Camorden,  a  Strange  Story,"  was 
published.  It  was  an  unusual  and  very 
promising  tale  of  hallucination,  and  its 
success  was  encouraging.  That  same  year, 
in  collaboration  with  his  friend  and  class 
mate,  Frank  Dempster  Sherman,  he  pro 
duced  a  series  of  satirical  and  humorous 
pieces,  which  were  put  into  a  volume  under 
the  title  of  "New  Waggings  of  old  Tales." 
234 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

Soon  afterward  lie  resigned  from  Life, 
in  order  to  devote  more  time  to  larger 
work. 

The  first  product  of  the  rising  author's 
independent  career  was  a  travesty  on  "  The 
Taming  of  the  Shrew"  called  "Katherine," 
which  he  wrote  for  a  dramatic  association 
connected  with  the  Seventh  Regiment  of 
the  New  York  National  Guard.  It  fol 
lowed  the  Shakespearean  construction 
rather  closely,  and,  with  its  many  quips  and 
gags  and  jolly  songs,  made  a  first-rate 
libretto  for  a  comic  opera.  The  popularity 
of  the  travesty  advertised  the  fame  of 
Bangs  from  one  end  of  Manhattan  Island 
to  the  other.  The  following  year,  for  the 
same  organization,  he  wrote  another  trav 
esty,  "  Mephistopheles,  a  Profanation  "  ; 
and  this,  too,  won  much  popularity  and 
further  brightened  its  author's  name. 

The  happy  results  of  his  experience  as 

235 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

the  father  of  three  boys  were  noticeable  in 
the  book  which  Mr.  Bangs  published  in 
1891,  "  Tiddledywink  Tales,"  the  first  of 
a  series  of  amusing  stories  for  children. 
The  other  divisions  of  this  series  are  "  In 
Camp  with  a  Tin  Soldier,"  «  The  Tiddledy 
wink  Poetry  Book,"  and  "  Half  Hours  with 
Jimmie-Boy,"  books  that  have  endeared 
their  author  to  half  the  grown-up  children 
in  the  land.  It  was  by  means  of  these 
books  that  he  became  a  most  welcome  con 
tributor  to  Harper's  Round  Table  and  to 
the  juvenile  departments  of  various  literary 
syndicates.  A  novel,  "  Toppleton's  Client," 
appeared  in  1893,  and  in  that  year  also  ap 
peared  his  first  widely  successful  work, 
"Coffee  and  Repartee,"  a  collection  of 
Idiot  papers,  which  has  been  described,  and 
with  good  reason,  as  a  mixture  of  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  and  Bill  Nye.  Those 
were  not,  compared  with  the  present  time, 
236 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

enthusiastic  literary  days,  and  yet  in  a  few 
years  fifty  thousand  copies  of  the  little 
book  were  sold.  "  Coffee  and  Repartee" 
was  followed  at  regular  intervals  by  "  The 
Water-Ghost,"  "  The  Idiot,"  "  Mr.  Bona 
parte  of  Corsica,"  and  by  the  other  books 
whose  names  have  at  some  time,  been  on 
every  liberal  reader's  tongue, 

One  of  the  most  entertaining  of  the 
New  Yorker's  books  is  "Ten  Weeks  in 
Politics,"  behind  the  writing  of  which  is  a 
story  worth  telling.  In  1894  Mr.  Bangs 
was  nominated  by  the  Democrats  for  Mayor 
of  Yonkers.  "No  candidate,  I  sincerely 
believe,"  says  his  friend  Mr.  Corbin,  "  ever 
entered  a  political  campaign  with  greater 
seriousness  or  with  a  more  strenuous  desire 
to  devote  himself  to  the  public  good ;  and 
except  for  any  one  of  half  a  dozen  acci 
dents  he  would  have  been  elected.  To 
begin  with,  one  of  the  cleverest  of  New 

237 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

York  newspapers,  the  editorial  policy  of 
which  has  been  suspected  of  personal  pre 
judice,  appeared  to  bear  a  grudge  against 
Mr.  Bangs,  and  persecuted  him  in  prose 
and  in  verse  with  the  implication  that  he 
was  making  a  farce  of  politics.  But  the 
real  cause  of  his  defeat,  as  he  explains 
with  a  quiet  smile,  was  the  fact  that  he 
refused  one  midnight  to  turn  his  house  in 
to  a  beer  garden  for  the  benefit  of  a  local 
German  band  that  serenaded  him  ;  and  in 
point  of  fact  the  votes  of  the  musicians 
and  their  heelers  were  enough  to  turn  the 
scale.  Though  Mr.  Bangs  is  always  will 
ing  to  laugh  at  the  figure  he  cut  as  a 
politician,  he  has  never  lost  the  sense  of 
his  duty  as  a  citizen.  His  victorious  rival 
had  the  magnanimity,  which  in  such  cases 
is  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  from  politi 
cal  wisdom,  to  offer  him  a  subordinate 
position  in  his  administration  —  on  the 
238 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

Board  of  Education,  I  think.  Mr.  Bangs 
had  the  magnanimity,  which  could  not 
have  contained  the  least  scruple  of  policy, 
to  accept  the  position  and  to  fill  it  to  the 
best  of  his  ability,  even  while  he  was 
writing  his  *  Ten  Weeks  in  Politics.' 
This  episode  is  thoroughly  characteristic." 
Mr.  Bangs  has  spoken  of  that  defeat  as 
the  greatest  blessing  that  he  ever  met. 
"In  later  years,"  he  says,  "when  I  saw 
how  I  would  have  been  forced  to  abandon 
my  chosen  profession  for  politics,  when  I 
learned  that  the  mayoralty  would  have 
taken  every  moment  of  my  time,  I  was 
glad  that  I  had  been  defeated.  I  saw,  for 
the  first  time,  the  truth  in  the  saying  that 
a  man  can  do  more  to  bring  success  within 
his  grasp  by  standing  by  his  original  propo 
sition,  even  if  it  be  a  humorous  one.  And 
politics  and  humor  do  not  mix,  unless  you 
happen  to  be  a  cartoonist." 

239 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Politics  and  humor  mix  well  enough  in 
the  right  man ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  doubted 
that  literature  has  been  the  gainer  by  the 
result  of  that  election  in  Yonkers.  The 
defeated  candidate  would  probably  have 
made  an  excellent  Mayor.  He  certainly 
would  have  made  a  conscientious  Mayor ; 
and  by  reason  of  this  conscientiousness  the 
reading  public  would  have  missed  books 
which  have  made  us  certain  that  Mr. 
Bangs  is  a  gifted  humorist. 

Mr.  Corbin,  by  the  way,  tells  another 
interesting  story  of  his  friend's  character 
istic  activity.  "  Once  when  I  went  to 
Yonkers,"  says  Mr.  Corbin,  "  he  appeared 
as  the  proprietor  of  a  livery  stable.  He 
explained  that  the  business  had  been  run 
ning  down  when  he  took  it,  and  that  by 
charging  himself  a  thousand  or  two  a  year 
for  cab  hire  he  was  making  a  l  go '  of  it ; 
and  that  moreover,  as  he  paid  his  account 
240 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

to  himself  it  did  not  cost  him  anything  to 
ride.  The  plain  fact  seemed  to  be  that 
his  ready  purse  and  his  business  sense  had 
saved  a  humble  neighbor  from  misfor 
tune." 

Before  closing  the  political  chapter  of 
Mr.  Bangs's  career  it  may  prove  interest 
ing  to  quote  from  a  "  send-off  "  which  a 
Yonkers  paper  gave  him  on  March  10, 
1894,  just  before  the  German  band  episode. 

"  Mr.  Bangs,"  it  said,  "  is  a  Democrat 
of  the  strictest  kind,  and  can  always  be 
relied  upon  to  care  for  and  advance  the  in 
terests  of  his  party,  while  at  the  same  time 
he  will  so  guard  and  guide  the  municipal 
ship  as  to  avoid  the  rocks  of  reckless  ex 
penditure,  and  pass  safely  into  the  harbor 
of  wise  economy.  With  such  a  candidate 
the  Democracy  believes  it  can  surely  re 
capture  the  mayoralty,  and  at  the  same 
time  secure  for  the  city  a  young,  able,  and 

241 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

in  all  respects  a  competent,  honest,  and 
faithful  chief  magistrate. 

"  Mr.  Bangs  is  popular  in  the  club  life 
of  the  city,  being  a  member  of  the  old 
Palisade  Boat  Club  and  the  Yonkers  Lawn 
Tennis  Club.  In  the  latter  he  is  the 
Chairman  of  the  Entertainment  Committee, 
and  also  a  member  of  the  Building  and 
Book  Committees.  He  is  not  only  one  of 
the  best  lawn  tennis  players  in  the  club, 
but  in  the  alleys  of  the  boat  club  has 
proved  himself  a  skillful  bowler,  having 
figured  conspicuously  in  the  recent  annual 
tournament.  He  recently  proved  himself 
a  public  speaker  of  no  mean  order  when  he 
delivered  his  lecture  on  « The  Evolution  of 
the  Humorist  from  Adam  to  Bill  Nye,'  for 
a  charitable  object.  He  also  took  promi 
nent  part  in  the  last  charity  ball,  which  is 
the  social  event  of  the  season  in  this  city." 

How  that  catalogue  of  social  and  athletic 
242 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

qualifications  must  have  appealed  to  a  man 
of  the  victim's  sense  of  humor ! 

Mr.  Bangs  takes  his  own  medicine.  He 
firmly  believes  that  humor  sweetens  life. 
"  Show  me  a  man  who  does  not  appreciate 
humor,"  he  said  once,  "and  I  will  show 
you  a  man  who  is  morbid,  cynical,  unre 
sponsive  to  every  fine  impulse  of  nature. 
Such  a  man  is  worse  than  a  pessimist,  and 
more  to  be  pitied.  Take  some  of  the 
greatest  and  most  successful  men  in  the 
world.  Humor  has  always  played  an  im 
portant  part  in  their  lives.  Often  a  funny 
incident  has  marked  the  turning-point  of  a 
great  man's  career ;  often  some  ridiculous 
position  has  been  the  impetus  of  a  new 
start  in  life.  Humor  is  as  necessary  to 
the  home  as  is  the  cooking  stove.  I  mean 
good,  healthy  humor.  It  eases  the  mind 
and  it  becomes  an  educator;  it  fills  and 
makes  pleasant  many  a  long  night;  it 

243 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

gives  encouragement  to  the  wanderer ;  it 
relieves  the  tired  mother  of  the  burden  of 
her  cares ;  it  encourages  men  and  women 
to  look  on  the  bright  side  of  life,  and  the 
bright  side  is  the  only  side  which  should 
be  exposed  to  view.  Literature  is  the  best 
vehicle  of  humor.  In  literature  it  lives 
the  longest,  and  in  literature  it  can  be 
studied  and  appreciated  to  the  best  advan 
tage.  Someone  has  said  that  literature 
robs  humor  of  its  spontaneity  1  A  mistake  ! 
A  great  mistake  I  A  good,  solid  humorous 
book,  or  passage  in  a  book,  can  be  appre 
ciated  a  hundred  times  over.  The  mind 
retains  fun  longer  than  it  retains  cold 
facts.  You  will  hear  a  man  repeat  some 
thing  funny  that  he  read,  years  after,  when 
he  could  n't,  for  his  life,  tell  you  the  rudi 
ments  of  the  mathematical  problems  which 
he  spent  years  in  trying  to  master.  A 
good  man  looks  upon  a  good  book  as  a 
244 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

friend.  He  goes  to  it  for  consolation  when 
ever  he  feels  blue  and  sullen,  whenever 
nostalgia  claims  him  as  her  own.  How 
quickly  do  the  careworn,  the  tired,  the 
stragglers,  the  successful  ones  as  well,  find 
rest  in  the  realms  of  humor !  " 

In  the  course  of  his  busy  life  —  to  give 
some  facts  not  to  be  found  in  the  Yonkers 
eulogy —  Mr.  Bangs  has  been  vestryman  of 
a  church,  a  purchaser  of  books  for  a  public 
library,  a  journalist,  and  a  director  of  a 
private  school.  At  present  he  is  giving 
brilliant  service  as  editor  of  Harper's 
Weekly.  Meantime,  his  pen,  or  his  type 
writer,  is  not  idle  at  home,  as  the  publica 
tion  a  few  months  ago  of  "  The  Idiot  at 
Home"  attests. 


245 


HAMLIN    GARLAND. 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 


Y  T AMLIN  GARLAND  is  Western 

I  i  in  every  sense  of  that  broad  term. 
-*  -*•  To  him  the  West  has  been  birth 
place,  playground,  battlefield.  Not  only 
as  a  writer  but  also  as  a  man  he  takes  that 
far-seeing,  keen,  siricere,  unconventional 
view  of  things  in  general  that  distinguishes 
the  thoroughbred  Westerner.  Like  Jim 
Matteson,  the  hero  of  his  latest  novel,  he 
sympathizes  with  the  elements.  He  might 
appear  to  be  at  home  in  an  Eastern  draw 
ing-room,  but  we  think  that  he  would  pre 
fer  to  live  in  his  own  country. 

There  might  be  some  dissent  from  the 
opinion  that  he  is  the  foremost  of  our 
Western  novelists ;  but  there  can  hardly 
be  any  dissent  from  the  opinion  that  he  oc- 

247 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

cupies  an  unique  place  in  American  litera 
ture,  for  not  only  has  he  sounded  a  new, 
vibrant,  resonant  chord  in  our  literature, 
but  he  also  has  been  our  one  fearless  and 
unchangeable  literary  impressionist.  "  I 
believe,"  he  said  once,  to  illustrate  his  rule 
of  work,  "  that  the  beauty  disease  has  been 
the  ruin  of  much  good  literature.  It  leads 
to  paint  and  putty  —  to  artificiality.  If  a 
thing  is  beautiful,  well  and  good ;  but  I  do 
not  believe  in  an  artist  using  literary  var 
nish  in  writing  of  sordid  things.  He  can 
discover  the  beauty  in  sordid  lives  not  by 
varnishing  them,  but  by  sympathetic  inter 
pretation  of  them." 

The  West  has  been  his  birthplace  and 
his  playground.  He  was  born  in  the  beau 
tiful  La  Crosse  Valley,  Wisconsin,  in  Sep 
tember,  1860.  His  parents  were  of  Scotch 
Presbyterian  stock,  which  fact,  together 
with  his  early  environment,  must  account 
248 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 

for  his  radical  and  aggressive  mental  out 
fit.  "My  dear  old  parents,"  he  says, 
"brought  me  up  like  a  Spartan  soldier. 
I  owe  so  much  to  my  mother;  to  the 
goodness  and  patient  sympathy  with  which 
she  trained  and  softened  my  blustering 
boyish  nature."  If  you  look  at  the  dedi 
cation  of  "  Main-Travelled  Roads  "  you 
will  find  an  echo  of  this  eulogy :  "  To 
my  father  and  mother,  whose  half -century 
pilgrimage  on  the  main-travelled  road  of 
life  has  brought  them  only  trial  and  depri 
vation,  this  book  is  dedicated  by  a  son  to 
whom  every  day  brings  a  deepening  sense 
of  his  parents'  silent  heroism."  This  ap 
preciation  of  his  parents'  more  than  dutiful 
sacrifices  constantly  finds  expression  in  the 
author's  work ;  it  is  a  salient  feature  of  his 
individuality. 

Seven  years  after  his  birth  the  family 
moved  to  Winneshiek  County,  Iowa,  a  spot 

249 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

typical  of  the  primeval  West ;  and  it  was 
here  that  Garland  first  got  the  vivid  im 
pressions  of  nature  which  he  has  so  suc 
cessfully  pictured  in  his  stories.  There  is, 
for  instance,  in  "  Up  the  Coule*,"  a  little 
picture  worthy  of  Millet. 

"  A  farm  in  the  valley.  Over  the  moun 
tains  swept  jagged,  gray,  angry,  sprawling 
clouds,  sending  a  freezing,  thin  drizzle  of 
rain,  as  they  passed,  upon  a  man  following 
a  plough.  The  horses  had  a  sullen  and  weary 
look,  and  their  manes  and  tails  streamed 
sideways  in  the  blast.  The  ploughman, 
clad  in  a  ragged  gray  coat,  with  uncouth, 
muddy  boots  upon  his  feet,  walked  with 
his  head  inclined  toward  the  sleet  to  shield 
his  face  from  the  cold  and  sting  of  it.  The 
soil  rolled  away,  black  and  sticky,  with  a 
dull  sheen  upon  it.  Near  by,  a  boy  with 
tears  on  his  cheeks  was  watching  cattle, 
a  dog  seated  near,  his  back  to  the  gale." 
250 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 

But  did  Garland  take  any  part  in 
such  experiences  ?  He  did,  indeed.  "  I 
ploughed  seventy  acres  of  land  when  I  was 
ten  years  old,"  he  says,  "  and  more  each 
year  after  that.  I  was  so  small  that  I  had 
to  reach  up  to  catch  hold  of  the  handles  of 
the  plough,  but  I  did  it.  I  can  remember 
well  how  I  felt  when  I  started  out  for  my 
first  ploughing  in  the  spring.  My  muscles 
were  then  tender,  my  feet  sank  down  into 
the  soil,  throwing  my  weight  on  the  ankles 
and  the  tendons  of  the  feet.  By  the  end 
of  the  first  day  I  was  almost  ready  to  drop 
with  pain,  but  I  had  to  go  on.  And  how 
my  bones  did  ache  the  next  morning  when 
I  was  called  to  go  to  work!  I  worked 
right  along,  however,  going  to  school  in 
the  winter  until  I  was  fifteen." 

But  not  all  the  work  was  at  the  plough. 
With  his  brother  Frank  he  worked  out  on 
the  prairies,  sometimes  herding  cattle, 

251 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

sometimes  scouting  for  the  neighbors.  In 
deed,  somewhere,  we  believe,  the  author 
has  said  that  almost  half  his  life  has  been 
spent  in  the  meadows  and  on  horseback. 
Many  recollections  of  these  days  are  to  be 
found  in  "  Prairie  Songs,"  which  book,  in 
fact,  is  almost  a  complete  reflection  of  his 
boyhood  days.  And  on  the  prairies,  too, 
he  met  the  grangers, —  we  use  the  word  in 
its  dignified  sense  —  "  those  incessant  toil 
ers  who  experience,  in  all  its  bareness,  the 
rough  and  bitter  side  of  the  great  '  main- 
travelled  road.' " 

But  the  school  in  which  he  got  the  bulk 
of  his  education  was  Cedarville  Academy, 
in  Mitchell  County,  just  a  little  westward 
from  his  home.  There  he  made  a  special 
study  of  history  and  English  composition ; 
and  there,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  he 
had  the  use  of  a  library.  He  was  gradu 
ated  from  the  academy  at  the  age  of 
252 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 

twenty -one.     The  following  two  years  he 
spent  teaching  and  lecturing  in  the  East. 

The  list  of  the  subjects  of  his  lectures 
show  us  the  breadth  of  mind  which  he  had 
reached  just  as  he  entered  citizenhood ;  it 
attests,  too,  his  remarkable  intellectual  en 
ergy  and  his  sympathy  with  his  times. 
These  are  some  of  the  literary  topics  :  The 
Transcendentalists,  Emerson  and  Thoreau ; 
The  Balladists,  with  readings  from  Whit- 
tier,  Longfellow  and  Holmes  ;  Walt  Whit 
man,  the  Prophet  of  the  New  Age;  The 
Epic  of  the  Age,  the  Novel,  the  American 
Novel;  Americanism  in  the  Novel,  with 
reference  to  William  Dean  Howells  and 
Henry  James ;  The  Pioneers,  Bret  Harte 
and  Joaquin  Miller ;  Some  Representative 
Names,  Joseph  Kirkland,  E.  W.  Howe, 
George  W.  Cable,  Joel  Chandler  Harris, 
Miss  Murfree,  Miss  Baylor,  Miss  Wilkins, 
Miss  Jewett,  Rose  Terry  Cooke ;  the  City 

253 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

in  Fiction  and  the  Drama ;  The  Future  of 
Poetry  and  Fiction;  The  Art  of  Edwin 
Booth ;  Shakespeare  and  Browning. 

There  is  something  truly  Western  in  the 
fact  that  Garland  was  attracted  to  Dakota 
by  the  land  boom  of  1883.  He  soon 
learned,  however,  that  the  boom  was  not 
for  him ;  indeed,  his  only  profit  from  it  was 
experience. 

In  1884,  consequently,  he  took  up  the 
study  of  English  literature  in  the  Boston 
Public  Library.  He  had  intended  to  take 
a  course  in  literature  and  oratory  at  some 
college,  preliminary  to  returning  to  the 
West  to  teach.  But  it  is  significant  of 
his  mental  make-up  that  he  found  college 
methods  "too  scholastic  and  too  dry,"  and, 
in  general,  opposed  to  his  own  convictions. 
This  brings  to  mind  what  a  man  who  met 
him  early  in  the  nineties  said :  "It  would 
be  impossible  for  any  conventional  critic 
254 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 

to  kill  Mr.  Garland  with  scholarly  criti 
cism  ;  he  has  a  buoyancy  of  indifference  to 
obstacles  as  free  as  a  cyclone  from  one  of 
his  own  Iowa  prairies ;  he  would  joyously 
tell  the  most  learned  professors  of  Harvard 
College  that  the  universities  as  at  present 
conducted  in  America  are  the  bulwarks  of 
conservatism  and  the  foes  of  progress ;  the 
people  who  hear  him  talk  about  realism 
and  naturalism  and  truth  usually  confess 
an  exhilaration  at  *  finding  someone  now-a- 
days '  who  believes  the  things  he  does  be 
lieve  with  most  consuming  fervor." 

Naturally  his  unconventional  method  of 
studying  English  literature  had  an  unusual 
result.  To  quote  from  remarks  that  he 
made  in  Boston  a  few  years  ago :  "  The 
whole  perspective  of  English  literature 
changed  with  me.  Chaucer  was  no  longer 
great  simply  because  someone  had  said 
that  he  was ;  Crabbe  was  not  dry  because 

255 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

some  professor  of  English  literature  had 
said  so.  I  went  into  the  philosophic  de 
velopment  of  English  literature  from  the 
earliest  myth,  through  the  drama  —  which, 
by  the  way,  I  found  to  be  a  continuous 
chain,  and  not  a  miracle  —  up  to  distinc 
tively  modern  literature.  Throughout,  I 
gave  to  my  reading  a  modern  man's  com 
ments.  If  I  did  n't  like  an  author's  work 
I  did  n't  try  to  like  it.  So,  you  see,  after 
all,  my  work  in  the  library  was  mainly  a 
process  fitting  me  for  teaching." 

But  all  the  time,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he 
was  moving  farther  away  from  the  teacher's 
desk.  As  he  studied  American  literature 
it  occurred  to  him  that  the  Western  side 
of  it  might  be  still  further  developed. 
That  side  certainly  lacked  anything  cor 
responding  to  his  fresh  and  deep  impres 
sions  of  it.  It  was  only  a  step  from  the 
thought  to  the  deed. 
256 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 

Harper's  Weekly  published  his  first  poem, 
"  Lost  in  the  Norther,"  a  description  of  a 
man  lost  in  a  blizzard,  and  paid  him  twenty- 
five  dollars  for  it.  With  characteristic 
generosity,  he  spent  the  money  on  his  par 
ents,  buying  a  copy  of  Grant's  "  Memoirs  " 
for  his  father  and  a  silk  dress  for  his 
mother.  His  mother,  too,  by  the  way,  re 
ceived  half  the  money  paid  for  his  first  bit 
of  fiction.  This  is  the  story  that  Garland 
told  in  Washington  five  or  six  years  ago : 

"I  had  been  studying  in  Boston  for 
several  years,  when  I  went  out  to  Dakota 
to  visit  my  parents.  The  night  after  I 
arrived  I  was  talking  with  mother  about 
old  times  and  old  friends.  She  told  me 
how  one  family  had  gone  to  New  York  for 
a  visit  and  had  returned  only  too  happily 
to  their  Western  home.  As  she  told  the 
story  the  pathos  of  it  struck  me.  I  went 
into  another  room  and  began  to  write. 

257 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

The  story  was  one  of  the  best  chapters  of 
my  book  '  Main-Travelled  Roads.'  I  read 
it  to  mother,  and  she  liked  it,  and  upon 
telling  her  that  I  thought  it  was  worth  at 
least  seventy-five  dollars  she  replied:  'Well, 
if  that  is  so  I  think  you  ought  to  divvy  with 
me,  for  I  gave  you  the  story.'  '  I  will,'  said 
I,  and  so  when  I  got  my  seventy-five  dollars 
I  sent  her  a  check  for  half.  I  got  many 
good  suggestions  during  that  trip  to  Da 
kota.  I  wrote  poems  and  stories.  Some 
of  the  stories  were  published  in  The  Cen 
tury  Magazine,  and  I  remember  that  I  re 
ceived  six  hundred  dollars  within  two 
weeks  from  its  editors.  It  was  perhaps  a 
year  later  before  I  published  my  first 
book." 

This    first     book    is     "Main-Travelled 

Roads,"  which  by  some  is  still  regarded 

as  his  best  book.     During  the  past  ten 

years  he  has  been  almost  restlessly  busy 

258 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 

with  novels,  poems,  essays,  and  plays,  in 
all  of  which  there  is  more  or  less  evidence 
of  his  magnificent  unconventionality. 

For  if  there  be  anything  magnificently 
unconventional  in  American  literature  it 
is  such  works  as  "  A  Spoil  of  Office  "  and 
"Crumbling  Idols."  "I  am,"  said  Gar 
land,  in  a  letter  written  in  1891,  "an  im 
pressionist,  perhaps,  rather  than  a  realist. 
I  believe,  with  Monet,  that  the  artist  should 
be  self-centred,  and  should  paint  life  as  he 
sees  it.  If  the  other  fellow  does  n't  see  the 
violet  shadows  on  the  road,  so  much  the 
worse  for  him.  A  whole  new  world  of 
color  is  opening  to  the  eyes  of  the  present 
generation,  exemplifying  again  that  all 
beauty,  all  mystery,  is  under  our  spread 
hand — waiting  to  be  grasped.  I  believe, 
also,  that  there  is  the  same  wealth  of  color- 
mystery  in  the  facts  of  our  daily  lives,  and 
that  within  a  single  decade  a  race  of  dra- 

259 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

matists  and  novelists  will  demonstrate  the 
truth  of  my  inference." 

The  decade  has  come  and  gone,  but  the 
new  race  of  dramatists  and  novelists  is 
still  absent.  Mr.  Garland  is  even  now  far 
ahead  of  the  crowd. 

He  once  described  his  manner  of  work 
ing  to  Mr.  Walter  Blackburn  Harte,  an 
other  radical,  but  not  so  fortunate,  thinker. 
He  said  that  he  never  writes  under  pres 
sure.  "I  work  precisely  as  some  painters 
do.  I  have  unfinished  pictures  lying 
around  my  workshop.  After  breakfast 
each  morning  I  go  into  my  writing-room, 
and  whichever  picture  chimes  in  with  my 
mood,  after  a  glance  around,  claims  me  for 
that  morning.  I  work  on  it  as  long  as  I 
find  great  pleasure  in  it,  and  I  stop  the 
moment  I  am  conscious  of  it  becoming  a 
grind.  If  I  have  any  power  left,  I  tun? 
to  something  else ;  if  not,  I  quit  and  turn 
260 


HAMLIN  GARLAND 

to  recreation  —  reading,  study ;  or  I  go 
out  for  a  walk.  I  do  all  my  writing  on 
blocks  of  manuscript  paper,  and  I  have 
stacks  of  these  lying  around,  as  many  as 
forty  or  fifty  in  various  stages  of  comple 
tion.  I  never  write  on  any  one  thing  day 
after  day  just  with  the  purpose  of  getting 
it  done.  I  believe  thoroughly  in  moods, 
although  I  do  not  wait  for  any  particular 
mood,  for  I  am  in  the  mood  every  morn 
ing  for  something.  All  my  work  inter 
ests  me  supremely,  or  I  should  not  do  it." 
Mr.  Garland  was  married  a  few  years 
ago  to  Miss  Zuleme  Taft,  of  Chicago,  who 
has  achieved  some  fame  as  a  sculptor. 


261 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD 


/N  1876,  when  Paul  Leicester  Ford 
was  eleven  years  old,  he  published 
"  The  Webster  Genealogy,"  a  gene 
alogy  of  Noah  Webster,  with  notes  and 
corrections  of  his  own.  When  he  was 
seventeen  he  published  "  Websteriana,  a 
catalogue  of  books  by  Noah  Webster,  col 
lated  from  the  library  of  Gordon  L.  Ford." 
At  nineteen  he  also  became  the  author  of 
"Bibliotheca  Chaunciana :  a  list  of  the  writ 
ings  of  Charles  Chauncy,"  the  second  presi 
dent  of  Harvard  College. 

So  much,  at  least,  Ford  accomplished  be 
fore  he  was  out  of  his  'teens.  Yet,  consider 
ing  his  environment,  this  record  is  not  a 
matter  of  wonder.  Ford's  father  was  Gor 
don  L.  Ford,  a  successful  lawyer,  a  diligent 

263 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

student  of  American  history,  and,  in  the 
great  Greeley's  day,  publisher  of  the  New 
York  Tribune ;  and,  which  is  more  to  the 
point,  the  collector  and  owner  of  one  of  the 
largest  and  richest  private  libraries  in  the 
United  States.  Little  beyond  these  facts 
is  known  by  those  who  had  not  the  privi 
lege  of  Gordon  Ford's  acquaintance. 
Mr.  Lindsay  Swift  speaks  of  him  as  "an 
idealist  of  the  type  which  does  not  readily 
pursue  other  than  the  highest  ends,  and 
which  cannot  throw  open  the  reserves  of 
its  nature." 

Paul  was  born  on  March  23,  1865.  On 
his  mother's  side  he  is  descended  from 
Governor  Bradford  of  Plymouth  Colony, 
the  author  of  the  precious  manuscript  in 
the  State  House  at  Boston.  On  this  side, 
too,  he  is  the  great-great-great-grandson  of 
the  aforementioned  Chauncy  and  the  great- 
grandson  of  the  aforementioned  Webster, 
264 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD 

the  lexicographer,  and  the  grandson  of 
Professor  Fowler  of  Amherst  College. 
Paul's  brother,  Worthington  Chauncy 
Ford,  by  the  way,  is  already  famous, 
though  in  a  quieter  way,  as  a  statistician 
and  publicist. 

Paul  was  a  delicate  child;  his  very 
delicacy  gave  him  the  opportunity  to  culti 
vate,  under  extremely  favorable  circum 
stances,  his  endowment  of  strong  mental 
faculties.  He  was  educated  in  his  father's 
library.  It  is  said  that  the  Ford  house, 
which  stood  in  Clark  Street,  Brooklyn,  was 
fairly  walled  with  books.  At  the  time 
these  books  were  transferred  to  the  New 
York  Public  Library  their  number  was 
given  out  as  one  hundred  thousand.  The 
library  itself  was  a  room  some  fifty  feet 
square.  There  the  Ford  boys  were  edu 
cated  under  the  supervision  of  their  cul 
tured  parents. 

265 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Ford  is  by  nature  a  student;  and  under 
his  father's  guidance  this  disposition  was 
sedulously  cultivated.  As  a  child  he 
learned  to  set  type,  and  as  a  child,  also, 
he  assisted  his  father  in  historiographical 
work.  The  father  and  the  two  sons  es 
tablished  the  Historical  Printing  Club, 
issuing  books  and  pamphlets  relating  to 
American  history  and  bibliography.  This 
club  was  maintained  until  after  the  father's 
death.  Among  its  products  were  the 
papers  to  which  we  have  already  referred. 

Mr.  Lindsay  Swift  has  written  an  inter 
esting  description  of  the  famous  bibliogra 
phical  arena  in  which  Ford  developed  his 
genius.  The  description,  of  course  ante 
dates  the  memorable  transfer.  The  room, 
"  over  fifty  feet  square,  and  reached  from 
the  main  floor  by  a  short  flight  of  steps," 
he  says,  "  is  well  but  not  glaringly  lighted 
by  a  lantern  at  the  top,  while  the  sides, 
266 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FOED 

with  the  exception  of  a  few  small  windows, 
of  no  great  utility  owing  to  the  tallness  of 
surrounding  buildings,  are  fully  taken  up 
with  books  to  the  height  of  eight  feet.  The 
floor  is  covered  in  part  by  large  rugs ;  the 
walls  and  ceilings  are  of  serious  tint ;  a  fire 
place  is  opposite  the  entrance ;  while  sofas 
of  most  dissimilar  pattern  and  meant  seem 
ingly  to  hold  any  burden  but  a  human  one, 
are  placed  <  disposedly '  about ;  chairs,  easy 
but  not  seductive,  are  in  plenty,  but  like 
the  sofas  give  notice  that  here  is  a  govern 
ment  not  of  men  but  of  books  —  here  is  no 
library  built  for  the  lust  of  the  flesh  and 
pride  of  the  eye,  but  for  books  and  for  those 
who  use  them.  I  cannot  suppose  that  those 
smitten  of  bibliophily  would  thrill  over  the 
Ford  library, since  it  exists  for  the  practical 
and  virile,  although  it  is,  in  parts,  exceed 
ingly  choice.  Roughly  classified  to  suit 
the  easy  memories  of  the  owners,  it  pre- 
267 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

sents  an  appearance  urbane  and  imprecise 
rather  than  military  and  commanding.  At 
irregular  intervals  loom  huge  masses  of 
books,  pamphlets,  papers,  proof-sheets  and 
engravings  in  cataclysmic  disorder  and  ap 
parently  suspended  in  mid  air,  like  the 
coffin  of  the  False  Prophet,  but,  in  fact, 
resting  on  tables  well  hidden  by  the  super 
incumbent  piles.  In  this  room  the  father 
slowly  accumulated  this  priceless  treasure, 
mostly  illustrative  of  American  history  and 
its  adjuncts,  thereby  gratifying  his  own 
accurate  tastes  and  hoping,  as  we  may  sup 
pose,  that  his  children  would  ultimately 
profit  by  his  foresight."  No  doubt  the 
father  had  such  a  hope,  and  before  he 
died  he  lived  to  enjoy  the  fullest  realiza 
tion  of  it.  At  any  rate,  that  room  was 
Paul  Ford's  college,  and,  later,  his  literary 
workshop. 

It  might  dull  the  reader's  interest  to 
268 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD 

enter  into  a  detailed  account  of  all  the 
early  work  that  Ford  did  in  his  father's 
library,  but  we  may  say  that  between  1886 
and  1896  he  published  more  than  twenty 
pamphlets  and  books  bearing  on  American 
historiography  and  bibliography,  besides 
the  bulk  of  "The  Writings  of  Thomas 
Jefferson."  As  evidence  of  his  prodigious 
capacity  for  energy,  we  offer  the  list  of 
works  which  he  published  in  the  single 
year  1889  :  "  The  Franklin  Bibliography : 
a  list  of  books  written  by  or  relating  to 
Benjamin  Franklin,"  "  List  of  Some 
Briefs  in  Appeal  Cases  Which  Relate  to 
America  Tried  Before  the  Lords  Commis 
sioners  of  Appeals  of  Prize  Cases  of  His 
Majesty's  Privy  Council,  1736-1758," 
"  Check-List  of  American  Magazines 
Printed  in  the  Eighteenth  Century," 
"  Check-List  of  Bibliographies,  Catalogues, 
Reference  Lists,  and  Lists  of  Authorities 

269 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

of  American  Books  and  Subjects,"  "  Some 
Materials  for  a  Bibliography  of  the  Official 
Publications  of  the  Continental  Congress 
for  1774,"  «  The  Ideals  of  the  Republic  ; 
or  Great  Words  from  Great  Americans," 
and  "  Who  was  the  Mother  of  Franklin's 
Son?" 

His  most  notable  historical  works  are 
"The  True  George  Washington,"  which 
excited  so  much  comment  when  it  appeared 
in  1896,  and  "The  Many-Sided  Frank 
lin,"  published  serially  in  The  Century 
Magazine  a  few  years  ago.  Though  he 
may  take  advantage  of  moods,  he  does  not 
wait  for  moods.  They  say  that  Alphonse 
Daudet  was  such  a  man  of  moods  that  two 
months  would  pass  sometimes  and  leave 
the  paper  before  him  still  blank.  Ford  is 
Daudet's  antithesis  in  this  respect.  His 
pen  is  always  ready.  Perhaps  this  char 
acteristic  is  one  of  the  advantages  of  pur- 
270 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD 

suing  diverse  interests.  Yet,  notwithstand 
ing  the  immense  amount  of  literature 
which  he  has  produced  already,  the  New 
Yorker  is  as  painstaking  as  one  of  those 
Japanese  artists  who  will  labor  for  years 
on  a  single  vase.  Once,  when  half-way 
through  a  book,  he  discovered  that  he  was 
reaching  the  wrong  conclusion,  so  he  de 
stroyed  what  he  had  done  and  began  again. 
Only  a  writer  with  a  heroic  disregard  of 
time  and  effort,  and  with  a  sincere  purpose 
and  unlimited  zeal,  would  make  such  a 
sacrifice.  It  is  what  we  should  expect  of 
every  master-craftsman,  yet  we  fear  that 
the  deed  is  uncommon  enough. 

Mr.  Ford's  high  reputation  as  a  novelist 
was  established  by  "  The  Honorable  Peter 
Stirling."  Much  of  the  success  of  the 
novel  was  due  without  doubt  to  the  report 
that  the  hero  of  it  was  none  other  than 
the  Hon.  Grover  Cleveland.  Technically 

271 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

the  story  has  only  a  slight  value ;  or  per 
haps  it  is  fairer  to  say  that  its  literary 
merit  rises  and  falls.  There  are  passages 
that  drag ;  there  are  clumsy  passages ;  there 
are  amusing  unrealities ;  and  there  are 
scenes  photographic  in  their  portrayal  of 
metropolitan  life.  Then,  again,  the  broad 
theme  naturally  interested  the  public  — 
that  great  led  and  leading  mass  of  human 
ity  with  its  mercurial  temper  and  shifting 
whims  and  deep  sympathies.  The  strength 
and  the  weakness  of  the  book  —  its  literary 
dimness  and  its  popular  attractiveness  — 
are  illustrated  in  Stirling's  speech  at  the 
Goldman  trial. 

"  The  event  of  the  trial  came,  however, 
when  Peter  summed  up.  He  spoke  quietly, 
in  the  simplest  language,  using  few  adjec 
tives  and  no  invectives.  But  as  the  girl  at 
the  Pierce's  dinner  had  said :  «  He  describes 
things  so  that  one  sees  them.'  He  told 
272 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD 

of  the  fever-stricken  cows,  and  he  told  of 
the  little  fever-stricken  children  in  such  a 
way  that  the  audience  sobbed ;  his  clients 
almost  had  to  be  ordered  out  of  court ;  the 
man  next  Dummer  mopped  his  eyes  with 
his  handkerchief ;  the  judge  and  jury 
thoughtfully  covered  their  eyes  (so  as  to 
think  better)  ;  the  reporters  found  diffi 
culty  (owing  to  the  glary  light)  in  writing 
the  words,  despite  their  determination  not 
to  miss  one ;  and  even  the  prisoner  wiped 
his  eyes  in  his  sleeve.  Peter  was  uncon 
scious  that  he  was  making  a  great  speech', 
great  in  its  simplicity,  and  great  in  its 
pathos.  He  afterward  said  that  he  had 
not  given  it  a  moment's  thought  and  had 
merely  said  what  he  felt.  Perhaps  his  con 
clusion  indicated  why  he  was  able  to 
speak  with  the  feeling  he  did.  For  he 
said  : 

" 4  This  is  not  merely  the  case  of  the 

273 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

State  versus  James  Goldman.  It  is  the 
case  of  the  tenement-house  children  against 
the  inhumanity  of  man's  greed.' " 

A  vivid  picture  sketched  crudely,  judged 
from  the  artistic  view-point ;  but  a  picture 
to  touch  the  heart  of  the  people.  This 
human  element  in  the  story,  together  with 
the  popular  idea  that  the  hero  was  the  dis 
tinguished  statesman  now  resident  in 
Princeton,  made  u  The  Honorable  Peter 
Stirling  "  one  of  the  most  successful  books 
of  its  day. 

In  a  greater  or  less  degree  these  merits 
and  defects  are  reflected  in  "  The  Story  of 
an  Untold  Love"  and  in  "The  Great 
K.  &  A.  Train  Robbery,"  but  "Janice 
Meredith  "  reveals  marked  literary  improv- 
ment.  Janice  is  unquestionably  the  least 
artificial  of  all  his  female  characters.  In 
"  Janice  Meredith,"  too,  the  author  is  on 
familiar  ground.  One  has  only  to  compare 
274 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD 

his  Washington  with  the  Washington 
whom  Thackeray  pictured  in  "  The  Vir 
ginians  "  to  realize  fully  that  while  the  Eng 
lish  novelist  was  the  abler  writer  the 
American  is  the  closer  student. 

It  would  be  absurd  for  even  the  author's 
warmest  admirer  to  set  up  the  claim  that 
"  Janice  Meredith  "  is  the  great  American 
historical  novel ;  and  although  some  of  the 
friendly  critics  have  vaguely  hinted  as 
much,  no  one,  we  believe,  has  boldly  gone 
to  the  extremity  of  a  proclamation.  But 
it  must  in  all  justice  be  said  that  the  book 
contains  some  of  the  elements  which  one 
day  will  entitle  a  story  to  that  phenomenal 
distinction.  Notable  among  these  elements 
are  a  glowing  imaginativeness  and  a  rare 
faithfulness  of  historical  portraiture. 

Mr.  Swift  has  fortunately  given  us  a 
description  of  the  author  with  his  pen  in 
hand.  "  A  spirit  of  restlessness  takes  hold 

275 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

upon  Mr.  Ford  when  he  is  hardest  at  work," 
he  says,  "  and  he  shifts  at  pleasure  from  one 
to  another  of  his  several  desks  or  tables. 
I  should  imagine  that  the  curiosity  hunter 
of  the  future  who  might  wish  to  possess 
the  desk  at  which  or  the  chair  on  which 
the  author  of  4  Peter  Stirling '  sat  when  he 
penned  that  book,  might  comfortably  fill 
a  storage-warehouse  van  with  new-found 
joys.  Like  most  good  fellows  who  write, 
Mr.  Ford  knows  the  value  of  the  night  and 
often  works  to  best  advantage  when  honest 
folk  have  been  long  abed."  Again,  Ford 
is  described  as  being  alive  to  every  issue 
of  the  day  and  of  the  hour.  He  is  brilliant 
at  conversation,  and  perhaps  more  brilliant 
at  controversy,  "for,"  says  Mr.  Swift,  "I 
can  imagine  no  opposing  argument  so 
bristling  with  facts  as  to  prevent  his  mak 
ing  a  cavalry  charge  on  a  whole  table  of 
unsympathetic  listeners.  Life  is  at  its 
276 


PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD 

keenest  pitch  when  one  is  privileged  to 
hear  his  urgent  voice,  with  no  little  com 
mand  withal  in  its  notes,  and  to  see  the 
invincible  clearness  and  dominance  in  his 
black-brown  eyes." 

We  can  conclude  with  no  happier  remark 
than  that,  so  far  as  fiction  is  concerned,  at 
least,  Mr.  Ford  seems  destined  to  win  still 
greater  honors  than  those  already  in  his 
possession. 


277 


ROBERT    NEILSON    STEPHENS. 


ROBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 


^S  we  write  this  sketch,  we  have  in 
/J  mind  the  familiar  picture  of  Rob- 
•^  ert  Louis  Stevenson,  stretched  out 
on  a  couch  in  his  Samoan  home,  ailing, 
working.  There  is  a  sad  sweetness  in  the 
sharpened  face,  and  in  the  eyes  is  a  gleam 
of  bravery  or  determination.  The  Scot 
whom  the  entire  reading  world  still  loves 
so  dearly,  and  will  continue  to  love,  it 
seems,  when  the  babes  of  to-day  are  trem 
bling  graybeards,  knew  the  strenuous  life 
much  more  intimately  than  most  of  its  new 
advocates ;  but  it  was  a  part  of  his  art,  and 
the  artist  conceals  his  art.  Stevenson's 
sentences  glitter,  for  they  are  gems  of  lit 
erature;  but  the  glitter  was  given  them  at 
the  expense  of  sublime  patience  and  infinite 

279 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

pains.  Unconsciously  he  presented  an  ex 
ample  of  heroism;  consciously  he  showed 
the  young  writers  of  his  day  that  anything 
approaching  perfection  must  be  the  prod 
uct  of  scrupulous  industry.  Like  the  dia 
mond  polisher,  he  was  never  satisfied  with 
a  merely  smooth  facet :  the  facet  dazzled  or 
he  was  not  content. 

We  have  Stevenson  in  mind  at  this  time 
for  many  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  the 
subject  of  this  chapter,  Robert  Neilson 
Stephens,  may  know  of  the  letter  of  con 
gratulation  which,  when  he  was  writing  for 
the  Philadelphia  Press,  some  of  the  young 
men  of  that  journal  sent  to  the  distin 
guished  writer  on  the  Pacific  island;  and 
possibly  he  may  have  seen  the  answer  that 
Stevenson  sent — an  answer  filled  with 
modest  thanks  and  sound  advice  and  sin 
cere  good  wishes.  The  letter  ended  with 
the  remark  that  if  the  young  Philadelphians 
280 


ROBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

labored  skillfully  and  ambitiously  they 
would  surely  make  their  mark.  If  Steven 
son  had  lived  he  would  have  congratulated 
Robert  Neilson  Stephens  four  years  ago. 

You  will  notice  that  there  is  a  certain 
similarity  between  the  features  of  the  author 
of  "The  Master  of  Ballantrae"  and  the 
author  of  "Philip  Winwood" — the  same 
delicacy,  the  same  lurking  kindness,  the 
same  suggestion  of  indomitable  intellectu 
ality.  And  the  resemblance  extends  be 
yond  the  features,  also.  Stevenson,  in  his 
youth,  suffered  from  poverty;  so  did  Ste 
phens.  The  Scotchman  for  a  long  time 
dipped  his  pen  in  water,  making  no  im 
pression,  receiving  no  encouragement,  enter 
taining  no  luck ;  so,  also,  did  the  American. 
It  is  a  story  almost  as  old  as  the  world,  a 
story  illustrated  occasionally  in  the  skies. 
Astronomers  tells  us  that  light,  fast  as  it 
travels,  takes  years  upon  years  to  come  to 

281 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

us.  Often  it  is  the  same  with  men  of 
genius:  they  blaze  long  before  our  narrow 
vision  gives  any  sign  of  recognition. 

Someone,  by  the  way,  once  sympathized 
with  Stephens  on  his  ill  health.  Yes,  he 
was  far  from  strong,  he  admitted ;  "  but," 
he  said,  "  they  may  say  what  they  please — 
those  who  have  never  been  poor — I  would 
rather  be  ill  and  well-to-do,  as  I  am,  than 
poor  and  in  good  health,  as  I  was  for  many 
years.  I  have  had  many  sorrows,  but  hardly 
a  sorrow  that  was  not  aggravated,  if  not 
caused,  by  poverty,  or  that  very  moderate 
wealth  would  not  have  ameliorated  or  pre 
vented.  The  difference  between  pecuniary 
ease  and  poverty  is  oftentimes  simply  as  the 
difference  between  heaven  and  hell." 

We  may  not  all  agree  with  the  sentiment 

suggested,  that  riches  in  most  circumstances 

or  under  most  conditions  are  preferable  to 

poverty  with  good  health,  but  no  one  can 

282 


ROBEBT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

fail  to  discern  in  the  sentiment  the  bitter 
memory  of  a  man  who  has  been  acquainted 
with  great  distress.  At  any  rate,  his  is  a 
philosophy  based  on  experience.  To  expe 
rience,  also,  we  may  ascribe  Stephens's 
animadversion  regarding  friendship. 

"  When  a  man  makes  any  kind  of  suc 
cess,  however  small,"  he  says,  "he  finds 
that  his  old  friends  resolve  themselves  into 
three  classes.  The  first  class  turn  sullen, 
and  show  their  envy  in  many  mean  ways. 
The  second  class  wax  more  friendly  than 
ever,  and  come  showering  their  attentions. 
The  third  class  show  a  reasonable  pleasure 
at  your  success,  and  remain  just  as  they 
were  before.  God  bless  the  last  kind  1  God 
mend  the  second  I  and  God  pity  the  first  I  " 

Before  generalizing  farther  it  might  be 
better  to  reveal  some  of  Stephens's  career. 
Robert  Neilson  Stephens,  a  descendant  of 
the  Jacobite  fugitive  who  was  grandfather 

283 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

of  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  of  Georgia,  was 
born  on  July  22, 1867,  in  New  Bloomfield, 
a  little  town  in  Central  Pennsylvania.  The 
house  in  which  he  was  born  lay  a  stone's 
throw  from  the  academy  founded  by  his 
grandfather  and  conducted  by  his  father. 

The  first  distressful  event  came  into 
Robert's  life  when,  at  the  age  of  nine,  some 
seven  years  after  the  family  had  moved 
from  New  Bloomfield  to  Huntingdon,  on 
the  Juniata  River,  his  father  died.  His 
mother,  to  support  her  children,  took  a  po 
sition  as  a  school  teacher.  Notwithstand 
ing  the  lack  of  wealth,  however,  Robert 
went  through  the  public  high  school.  After 
leaving  school  he  went  to  work,  for  three 
dollars  and  a  half  a  week,  in  a  bookstore 
connected  with  a  stationery  factory.  Aside 
from  his  pride  and  his  poverty,  which  seem 
to  have  influenced  him  to  no  small  extent, 
he  was  a  delicate  youth,  and  his  steadiest 
284 


EGBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

companions  were  books.  Besides,  he  culti 
vated  assiduously  the  faculty  of  observation. 
This  cultivation  shows  itself  in  his  books. 
He  is  unsurpassed  among  the  novelists  of 
the  day  for  mastery  of  the  life  of  bygone 
periods. 

The  work  in  the  bookstore  was  distaste 
ful  to  him  in  many  ways.  The  narrowness 
and  the  ignorance  of  the  factory  hands 
chafed  his  delicate  sensibilities ;  the  nature 
of  the  work  itself  jarred  on  his  always 
strengthening  mental  equipment.  He  looked 
about  him  for  a  means  of  escape  from  this 
sort  of  prison,  incarceration  in  which  was 
little  sweetened  by  the  fact  that  in  the  sec 
ond  year  his  salary  was  raised  to  four  dol 
lars  and  a  half.  One  of  the  modes  of 
escape  which  he  attempted  was  stenography. 
By  assiduous  practice  he  acquired  such  fa 
cility  in  this  branch  of  writing  that  the 
Hon.  John  Scott,  solicitor-general  of  the 

285 


LITTLE  PILGKIMAGES 

Pennsylvania  Railroad,  aided  by  Mr.  Wil 
liam  B.  Wilson,  an  old  friend  of  the  boy's 
father,  before  long  secured  him  a  position 
in  the  railroad  company's  office  in  Phila 
delphia.  When  settled  down,  Robert 
brought  his  mother  and  brother  to  the  city 
on  the  Delaware. 

But,  pleasant  as  its  environment  was,  the 
young  stenographer  saw  in  his  new  position 
no  very  rosy  future.  It  was  not  —  as  it  is 
not  to-day  —  his  disposition  to  confound 
mere  comfort  with  success.  We  have 
quoted  his  remark  that  he  would  rather  be 
rich  and  sick  than  poor  and  well ;  but  we 
venture  to  think  that  the  riches  of  Mr. 
Rockefeller  would  fail  to  give  him  absolute 
satisfaction  so  long  as  the  feeling  of  profes 
sional  success  were  absent  from  him.  At 
any  rate,  we  judge  by  his  present  pursuits 
and  aims  that  his  ideal  is  nearer  to  the  re 
vered  and  affluent  workman,  like  Zola,  for 
286 


ROBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

example,  than  like  to  a  man  whose  sole  ob 
ject  is  the  enjoyment  and  disbursement  of 
dollars  and  cents. 

From  the  Pennsylvania  road  he  went  to 
the  Philadelphia  Press^  which  in  those  days 
was  a  veritable  cradle  of  authors.  Here 
his  literary  instinct  took  hold  of  him.  It 
had  taken  hold  of  him  once  before,  in  Hun 
tingdon,  one  vacation,  when  he  had  worked 
as  printer's  devil  in  the  office  of  a  weekly 
newspaper,  and,  as  often  happens  to  ««  dev 
ils,"  had  been  stricken  down  with  what 
may  be  called  typographical  fever.  The 
great  are  not  alone  in  the  enjoyment  of 
authorship.  We  believe  that  Mr.  Stephens's 
first  literary  offering,  an  article  describing 
the  joys  and  woes  of  budding  printers,  ap 
peared  in  that  Huntingdon  weekly. 

That,  however,  was  a  mere  juvenile  spasm, 
It  was  nothing  like  the  powerful  impulse 
that  came  to  him  just  previous  to  his  de*but 

287 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

as  a  writer  of  theatrical  notices  for  the 
Press.  He  showed  so  marked  an  aptitude 
for  this  employment  that  within  a  year  he 
was  virtually  in  full  charge  of  the  paper's 
important  dramatic  column.  Stephens's 
career  on  the  Press  was  as  varied  as  that 
of  the  average  newspaper  man,  and,  conse 
quently,  as  interesting  and  precious.  For 
the  patience  that,  like  the  steam-drill,  bores 
it  way  through  every  obstacle;  for  accu 
mulative  industry,  for  tireless  zeal,  for  un 
affected  modesty  dashed  with  power,  for 
knowledge  of  the  overt  and  covert  ways  of 
men  —  for  such  a  unique  mixture  of  crude 
virtue  and  wisdom  combined  commend  us 
to  the  enthusiastic  journalist. 

Stephens  unconsciously  heeded  Steven 
son's  caution  and  retired  from  journalism 
before  its  hypnotic  spell  had  taken  com 
plete  possession  of  him.  One  of  the  reasons 
for  his  retirement  from  journalism  was  the 
288 


ROBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

singular  rule  made  by  the  Press  that  mem 
bers  of  its  staff  must  not  write  for  any  other 
periodical.  Stephens  had  been  fortunate  in 
placing  his  extra  work,  and  naturally  he 
felt  that  the  rule  shut  out  promising  oppor 
tunities. 

Besides,  in  1889,  he  had  married  —  Mrs. 
Stephens  was,  before  her  marriage,  Miss 
Maude  Helf  enstein,  of  Chicago  —  and  there 
were  other  reasons  for  his  practical  view 
of  the  situation.  There  was  no  risk  in  the 
retirement,  for  he  had  made  many  friends 
while  on  the  Press,  especially  among  the  in 
habitants  of  the  theatrical  world.  He  re 
ceived  and  accepted,  in  1893,  an  offer  to 
become  general  agent  for  a  firm  of  theat 
rical  managers. 

Incidentally  he  was  required  to  write 
cheap  plays  —  plays  for  the  vulgar  public 
that  Gautier  despised  and  ridiculed.  These 
dutiful  efforts  are  hardly  noteworthy,  but  we 

289 


LITTLE  PILGEIMAGES 

must  mention  "  On  the  Bowery,"  a  melo 
drama  which  afforded  the  picturesque  and 
withal  good-hearted  Steve  Brodie  a  chance 
to  be  heroic  some  sixty-four  times  a  week. 
But  although  this  grade  of  work  was  un 
congenial  to  the  author,  it  opened  the  way 
to  a  better  field,  and,  in  September,  1896, 
his  play,  "  An  Enemy  to  the  King,"  writ 
ten  during  the  winter  of  1894-95,  was  pro 
duced  in  New  York  by  E.  H.  Sothern.  As 
this  was  his  first  ambitious  production,  the 
author  displayed  some  lack  of  nerve.  In 
stead  of  accompanying  his  wife  to  the  the 
atre,  he  shrank  back  to  a  nearby  comfortable 
refuge,  whither,  between  the  acts,  a  friend 
brought  him  tidings  of  the  performance. 
The  call  for  him  was  led  by  Richard  Hard 
ing  Davis  and  DeWolf  Hopper,  who,  run 
ning  across  him  outside  the  theatre,  half 
suffocated  him  with  congratulatory  em 
braces.  By  and  by  Mr.  Sothern  took  the 
290 


EGBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

successful  play  to  Boston ;  and  there  hap 
pened  the  circumstance  which  established 
the  author's  fame. 

The  play  was  seen  in  Boston  by  Mr.  L. 
Coues  Page,  the  Boston  publisher,  who, 
recognizing  in  it  the  elements  which  con 
stitute  a  popular  semi-historical  romance, 
and  foreseeing  the  extensive  demand  for 
that  branch  of  literature,  sought  the  author 
and  proposed  that  he  should  make  a  novel 
out  of  his  play.  The  proposal  was  readily 
accepted;  in  fact  the  contract  was  signed 
twenty-four  hours  after  the  author  and  pub 
lisher  had  first  met. 

The  instantaneous  popularity  of  the  book, 
which  was  published  in  the  fall  of  1897, 
had  a  two-sided  effect :  it  induced  the  author 
to  abandon  hack-work  entirely  and  devote 
his  best  energy  and  proficiency  to  fiction. 

It  is  deeply  to  be  regretted  that  Stephens's 
health  declined  simultaneously  with  his 

291 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

procession  to  the  seats  of  the  famous,  yet 
these  distressing  conditions  are  hardly  dis 
cernible  in  either  the  quantity  or  the  qual 
ity  of  his  work.  In  April,  1898,  his  second 
novel,  "  The  Continental  Dragoon,"  ap 
peared,  and  in  the  following  June  the  latest 
of  his  plays,  "  The  Ragged  Regiment,"  was 
produced  at  the  Herald  Square  Theatre, 
New  York.  In  October  of  that  year  ap 
peared  his  third  novel,  "The  Road  to 
Paris";  in  May,  1899,  "A  Gentleman 
Player  " ;  in  May,  1900,  his  highly  popu 
lar  Revolutionary  romance,  "Philip  Win- 
wood,"  written  almost  entirely  in  England, 
and  published  on  the  same  day  in  England, 
Canada,  and  the  United  States.  His  latest 
novel,  "  Captain  Ravenshaw,"  in  which  he 
returns  to  the  scene  of  "A  Gentleman 
Player  " —  Elizabethan  London  —  has  just 
reached  the  public. 

Shortly   after   the    publication    of    "A 
292 


ROBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

Gentleman  Player,"  the  novelist,  in  the 
assurance  of  a  handsome  income  and  of 
consequent  ease,  went  abroad  with  his  wife. 
Abroad  he  has  lived  ever  since.  This  fall, 
we  understand,  he  will  spend  traveling  on 
the  Continent.  The  first  part  of  the  winter 
he  plans  to  pass  in  Italy  or  in  Sicily,  the 
second  part  on  the  Riviera.  The  spring 
of  1902  will  find  him  in  Paris,  whence,  by 
the  end  of  spring,  he  expects  to  start  for 
home.  We  say  "  home  "  purposely,  for  we 
are  told  that  his  protracted  residence  abroad 
has  served  if  anything  to  deepen  and  en 
liven  his  loyalty  to  his  native  land. 

We  have  been  privileged  to  read  the 
preface  to  "  Captain  Ravenshaw."  The 
main  part  of  it  is  a  spirited  and  well-pointed 
defence  of  the  neo-romanticists  against  the 
eccentric  assault  of  Mr.  William  Dean 
Howells.  Then,  referring  to  the  book  it 
self,  Stephens  goes  on  to  say : 

293 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

"Now,  as  to  this  little  attempt  at  ro 
mance  in  a  certain  kind,  I  wish  merely  to 
say,  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  turn  over 
the  first  leaves  of  a  novel  in  a  bookstore  or 
library,  before  deciding  whether  to  take  it 
or  leave  it,  that  it  differs  from  the  usual 
adventure  story  in  being  concerned  merely 
with  private  life  and  unimportant  people. 
Though  it  has  incidents  enough,  and  perils 
enough,  it  deals  neither  with  war  nor  with 
state  affairs.  It  contains  no  royal  person ; 
not  even  a  lord  —  nor  a  baronet,  indeed, 
for  baronets  had  not  yet  been  invented  at 
the  period  of  the  tale.  The  characters  are 
every-day  people  of  the  London  of  the  time, 
and  the  scenes  in  which  they  move  are  the 
street,  the  tavern,  the  citizen's  house  and 
garden,  the  shop,  the  river,  the  public  re 
sort  —  such  places  as  the  ordinary  reader 
would  see  if  a  miracle  turned  back  time 
and  transported  him  to  London  in  the  clos- 
294 


ROBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

ing  part  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  The  atmos 
phere  of  that  place  and  time,  as  one  may 
find  it  best  in  the  less  known  and  more 
realistic  comedies  of  Shakespeare's  contem 
poraries,  in  prose  narratives  and  anecdotes, 
and  in  the  records  left  of  actual  transac 
tions,  strike  us  of  the  twentieth  century  as 
a  little  strange,  somewhat  of  a  world  which 
we  can  hardly  take  to  be  real.  If  I  have 
succeeded  in  putting  a  breath  of  this 
strangeness,  this  (to  us)  seeming  unreality, 
into  this  busy  tale,  and  yet  have  kept  the 
tale  vital  with  a  human  nature  the  same 
then  as  now,  I  have  done  something  not 
altogether  bad.  Bad  or  good,  I  have  been 
a  long  time  about  it,  for  I  have  grown  to 
believe  that  though  novel-reading  properly 
comes  under  the  head  of  play,  novel-writing 
properly  comes  under  the  head  of  work. 
My  work  herein  has  not  gone  to  attain  the 
preciosity  of  style  which  distracts  attention 

295 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

from  the  story,  or  the  brilliancy  of  dialogue 
which  —  as  the  author  of  '  John  Inglesant ' 
says,  Declares  the  glory  of  the  author 
more  pregnantly  than  it  increases  reality 
of  effect.'  My  work  has  gone,  very  much, 
to  the  avoidance  of  anachronisms.  This 
is  a  virtue  possessed  by  few  novels  which 
deal  with  the  past,  as  only  the  writers  of 
such  novels  know.  It  may  be  a  virtue 
not  worth  achieving,  but  it  was  a  whim  of 
mine  to  achieve  it.  Ill  health  forbade 
fast  writing,  the  success  of  my  last  previ 
ous  work  permitted  slow  writing,  and  I 
resolved  to  utilize  the  occasion  by  achiev 
ing  one  merit  which,  as  it  required  neither 
genius  nor  talent,  but  merely  care,  was 
within  my  powers.  The  result  of  my  care 
must  appear  as  much  in  what  the  story 
omits  as  in  what  it  contains.  The  reader 
may  be  assured  at  the  outset,  if  it  matters 
a  straw  to  him,  that  the  author  of  this 
296 


ROBERT  NEILSON  STEPHENS 

romance  of  Elizabethan  London  (and  its 
neighborhood)  is  himself  at  home  in  Eliza 
bethan  London;  if  he  fails  to  make  the 
reader  also  a  little  at  home  there  in  the 
course  of  the  story,  it  is  only  because  he 
lacks  the  gift,  or  skill  of  imparting." 

Months  ago  the  demand  for  "  Captain 
Ravenshaw"  was  so  great  that  the  pub 
lishers  were  forced  to  issue  an  unprece- 
dentedly  large  first  edition.  The  present 
circumstance  is  an  eloquent  commentary 
on  the  increase  of  the  author's  power  and 
popularity. 

That  power  and  that  popularity  seem 
destined  to  grow  larger  book  by  book. 
The  master  of  a  most  graceful  style  and  of 
diction  unsurpassed  for  simplicity  and  clear 
ness  ;  a  trained  observer,  as  every  success 
ful  writer  must  be  ;  a  diligent  and  uncom 
monly  perspicacious  student  of  the  periods 
from  which  he  takes  his  characters,  the 

297 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

author  of  "  Captain  Ravenshaw  "  promises 
ably  to  sustain  his  already  high  reputation. 
As  the  fulfilment  of  this  promise  depends 
largely  on  the  state  of  his  health,  we  wish 
him  well,  confident  that  in  expressing  the 
wish  we  but  echo  the  sentiment  of  his  wide 
circle  of  admirers. 


298 


CHARLES    G.    D.    ROBERTS. 


OH ARLES  G.D.  ROBERTS 


j-xROFESSOR "  Roberts  he  is  stiU 
r^  called  by  his  old  friends  in  New 
-*-  Brunswick,  and,  so  far  as  we  know, 
"  Old  Man"  he  is  still  called  by  his  literary 
companions.  "  The  *  Old  Man,' "  said 
Richard  Hovey  a  few  years  ago,  "he  is 
fondly  called  by  the  poets  who  are  his  com 
panions,  not  that  he  is  so  much  the  elder  of 
the  group,  but  perhaps  because  he  had  al 
ready  achieved  a  certain  measure  of  reputa- 
tation  and  was  a  full-fledged  man  of  letters 
when  the  others  were  just  beginning  their 
callow  boy-bows  to  the  Muse.  And  the 
name,  given  at  the  outset  in  a  comic,  mock- 
filial  mood,  has  stuck  to  him  as  a  term  of 
endearment." 

Hovey  —  may  he  rest  in  peace !  —  loved 

299 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

and  admired  Roberts.  He  said  so  in  writ 
ing  ;  he  said  so  o'  nights  in  the  company  of 
his  old  friends  in  Boston.  Hovey  had  a 
manner  that  would  remind  one  of  the  rivers 
branching  off  Roberts's  familiar  Bay  of 
Fundy.  At  first,  a  stranger,  you  found  it 
empty ;  in  a  few  moments,  if  he  offered  you 
the  right  hand  of  fellowship,  it  was  flooding 
with  a  warm  tide. 

We  could  readily  go  on  for  a  page  or  two 
speaking  of  the  lamented  singer,  and  of 
what  it  meant  to  know  him  as  a  friend  —  to 
share  his  hospitality  and  his  sympathy. 
But  it  occurs  to  us  that  some  reader  may  be 
inquiring  why  the  professor  from  New 
Brunswick  has  been  brought  into  a  book  on 
American  authors.  We  might  answer,  with 
a  smile,  to  incite  him  to  become  as  loyal  an 
American  as  General  Wallace  or  Mark 
Twain.  Or  we  might  repeat  as  an  answer  a 
statement  made  to  us  not  long  ago  by  an 
300 


CHARLES  G.D.ROBERTS 

observant  inhabitant  of  this  part  of  the  lit 
erary  world — «« Professor  Roberts  is  quite  as 
good  an  American  as  Henry  James."  But, 
using  American  in  its  fullest  sense,  Roberts 
easily  comes  in  under  that  head.  The 
shadow  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  falls  near 
his  birthplace.  His  public  is  largely  a 
purely  American  public.  His  residence  for 
the  last  four  years  has  been  New  York 
City.  He  is  perhaps  the  most  gifted  author 
reared  in  late  decades  by  our  lovely  neigh 
bor,  the  Dominion  of  Canada,  his  alma 
mater — 

O  child  of  nations,  giant-limbed, 
Who  stand' st  among  the  nations  now 

Unheeded,  unadored,  unhymned, 
With  unanointed  brow ! 

Speaking  of  Roberts  in  Tlie  Writer  once, 
his  friend  Hovey  said :  "  All  his  excursions 
include  a  return  ticket  to  the  Maritime 
Provinces,  and  'Up  and  Away  in  the 

301 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Morning '  is  always  for  the  sake  of  l  Home, 
Home  in  the  Evening.'  "  This  statement 
has  been  contradicted  by  Roberts's  life  dur 
ing  the  last  few  years.  He  is  to  be  found 
in  New  York  winter  and  summer. 

At  the  same  time  we  should  be  stultify 
ing  ourselves  to  deny  his  loyalty  to  his 
native  land.  It  lives  in  many  of  his  pages  ; 
it  is  kept  aflame  by  ties  of  family  and  of 
friendship.  The  beautiful  part  of  the 
world  northeast  of  New  England  has  been 
to  him  nursery,  academy  and  studio.  In 
deed,  one  who  knew  him  well  has  said: 
"  He  is  neither  Briton  nor  American,  but 
assertively  Canadian ;  and,  if  history  ever 
make  his  dream  a  reality,  his  own  poems 
will  not  have  been  an  entirely  negligible 
factor  in  bringing  it  to  pass." 

Charles  George  Douglass  Roberts,  M.A., 
F.R.S.C.,  F.R.S.L.,  was  born  in  Douglas, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Keswick  River,  near 
302 


CHARLES  G.D.  ROBERTS 

Fredericton,  New  Brunswick,  on  January 
10, 1860.  His  father,  the  Rev.  G.  Goodridge 
Roberts,  M.A.,  the  son  of  Professor  George 
Roberts,  Ph.D.,  is  the  rector  of  the  Eng 
lish  church  in  Fredericton,  and  also  the 
canon  of  Christ  Church  Cathedral.  His 
mother,  Emma  Wetmore  Bliss  Roberts, 
comes  of  what  used  to  be  known  as  United 
Empire  Loyalist  stock  —  the  same  stock, 
by  the  way,  that  Emerson's  mother  came 
of.  Her  ancestors  left  the  colonies  for  the 
provinces  at  the  outbreak  of  the  American 
Revolution.  There  were  many  influential 
families  among  the  Loyalists,  and,  on  the 
whole,  their  headstrong  flight  has  been 
beneficial  to  the  land  'way  down  East.  The 
novelist's  mother,  it  should  be  said,  is  a  sis 
ter  of  Bliss  Carman's  mother,  which  makes 
the  two  young  writers,  Roberts  and  Car 
man,  cousins  by  blood  as  well  as  brothers  by 
profession.  A  strong  intellectual  ancestry 

303 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

has  Roberts,  it  will  be  seen,  an  ancestry 
that  fully  accounts  for  the  circumstance 
that  his  sister  and  his  two  younger  brothers 
are  skillful  at  versification. 

The  first  fourteen  years  of  Roberta's  life 
were  spent  in  Woodstock,  of  which  parish  his 
father  was  then  the  rector,  and  up  to  the 
end  of  these  fourteen  years  Charles's  educa 
tion  had  been  personally  supervised  by  his 
father.  Fortunate  conditions !  —  as  they 
who  have  missed  such  supervision  can  most 
eloquently  testify.  Ideal  conditions,  if  we 
are  to  accept  the  well-digested  opinion  of 
scholastic  as  well  as  of  medical  experts. 

The  Robertses  moved  from  Woodstock  to 
Fredericton  in  1874.  At  Fredericton, 
Charles  attended  the  Collegiate  School. 
Chief  among  those  who  fitted  the  boy  for 
college  was  Dr.  George  R.  Parkin,  who, 
although  now  the  head  of  Upper  Canada 
College,  Toronto,  has  perhaps  been  most 
304 


CHARLES  G.D.  ROBERTS 

prominent  as  an  Imperial  Federationist  ad- 
advocate.  In  1876  young  Roberts  was 
matriculated  at  the  University  of  New 
Brunswick.  As  for  his  progress  there,  no 
more  need  be  said  than  that  he  won  the 
Douglas  silver  medal  for  Latin  and  Greek, 
the  alumni  gold  medal  for  the  Latin  essay, 
and  a  classical  scholarship.  In  1879  he 
was  graduated  with  honors  in  ethics,  meta 
physics  and  political  economy.  That  same 
year  he  was  appointed  head  master  of  the 
Chatham  (N.  B.)  Grammar  School.  The 
next  year,  1880,  chronicled  two  notable 
events  —  his  marriage,  and  the  publication 
of  his  first  book,  "  Orion  and  Other 
Poems." 

In  1881,  at  the  University  of  New  Bruns 
wick,  he  took  his  degree  of  Master  of  Arts 
for  Greek  and  higher  mathematics.  During 
the  next  two  years  he  taught  school  in 
Fredericton. 

305 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Then  there  came  a  brief  excursion  which 
may  have  illustrated  his  doubts  about  a 
career.  He  left  off  teaching  and  went  to 
Toronto.  There,  with  the  assistance  of 
Goldwin  Smith,  he  established  The  Week, 
the  most  important  of  the  Canadian  literary 
periodicals.  He  relinquished  this  work 
the  following  year  to  take  the  chair  of 
English  and  French  literature  in  King's 
CoUege,  Windsor,  Nova  Scotia.  In  1887 
he  abandoned  the  French  department  for 
the  department  of  Economics  and  Interna 
tional  Law.  At  Windsor  he  lived  in  a 
house  in  the  balmy  woods  —  "  Kingscroft," 
he  called  it  —  and  there  he  planned  three 
books  —  "The  Forge  in  the  Forest,"  his 
first  Acadian  romance ;  "  The  Book  of  the 
Native,"  and  "  A  History  of  Canada." 

These  plans  compelled  the  abandonment 
of  teaching,  so,  in  1895,  Roberts  left  King's 
College  and  returned  to  Fredericton.  At 
306 


CHARLES  G.D.  ROBERTS 

the  age  of  thirty-five,  therefore,  he  formally 
adopted  the  profession  of  literature. 

Early  in  1897  he  moved  to  New  York, 
where  for  eight  months  he  was  associate 
editor  of  The  Illustrated  American.  Since 
then  he  has  directed  his  efforts  wholly  to 
authorship. 

And  with  the  utmost  justification.  In  nar 
rative  and  in  descriptive  power  he  shines 
brilliantly  among  his  contemporaries. 
Hovey  would  not  answer  the  question. 
"  Who  is  the  greatest  poet  born  on  Can 
adian  soil  ?  "  —  "  but,"  he  writes,  "  when  I 
say  that  Roberts  is  par  excellence  the  '  Poet 
of  Canada,'  I  have  little  fear  that  anyone 
will  contradict  me."  There  is  his  noble 
hymn,  "  Canada,"  there  is  "  Autochthon," 
there  is  "  Kinship,"  there  is  "  Origins  "  — 
poems  of  faultless  grace  and  deep-founded 
sentiment  and  what  one  critic  has  termed 
"  chiselled,  Parnassian  calm."  For  example : 

307 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

The  mount,  the  star,  the  germ,  the  deep, 
They  all  shall  wake,  they  all  shall  sleep. 
Time,  like  a  flurry  of  wild  rain, 
Shall  drift  across  the  darkened  pane. 

Space,  in  the  dim  predestined  hour, 
Shall  crumble  like  a  ruined  tower. 
I  only,  with  unfaltering  eye, 
Shall  watch  the  dreams  of  Gods  go  by. 

Hovey,  whom  we  may  accept  as  an  ac 
complished  judge  of  symbolist  literature,  put 
"  Do  Seek  their  Meat  from  God"  and  "  The 
Young  Ravens  that  call  upon  Him,"  two 
sketches  in  "  Earth's  Enigmas,"  and  "  Savory 
Meats,"  a  story  published  in  the  Chap-Book^ 
together,  and  said  that  they  "  form  an  alto 
gether  unique  and  extraordinary  triptych. 
I  am  inclined  to  think  these  three  pieces," 
he  says,  "  Roberts's  most  notable  contribu 
tion  to  literature.  The  problem  of  the 
struggle  for  existence,  of  the  preying  of  life 
on  life,  is  treated  with  an  inexorable  fidelity 
to  the  fact,  a  catholic  sympathy,  a  sense  of 
308 


CHARLES  G.D.  ROBERTS 

universality  and  mystery,  and  a  calm  accep 
tance,  that  reaches  the  level  of  *  pathos '  in 
the  highest  Greek  usage  of  the  word.  There 
is  a  finality  in  these  three  prose  poems 
that  is  known  only  to  the  greatest  art." 

As  for  Robert's  novels,  they  are  full  of 
the  perfumed  freshness,  the  vigorous  life 
and  the  romantic  wealth  which  constituted, 
and  to  a  small  extent  still  constitute,  the 
salient  characteristics  of  the  lands  in  which 
he  spent  his  youth.  We  have  noted  his 
narrative  and  descriptive  power.  Let  us 
take  from  "  A  Sister  to  Evangeline "  one 
of  Paul  Grande's  visions  of  Yvonne  de 
Lamourie. 

"  In  one  of  these  I  saw  her  as  she  stood 
a  certain  morning  in  the  orchard,  prying 
with  insistent  little  finger-tips  into  the  heart 
of  a  young  apple-flower,  while  I  watched 
and  said  nothing.  I  know  not  to  this  day 
whether  she  were  thinking  of  the  apple- 

309 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

flower  or  wondering  at  the  dumbness  of  her 
cavalier ;  but  she  feigned,  at  least,  to  con 
cern  herself  with  only  the  blossom's  heart. 
Her  wide  white  lids  downcast  over  her  great 
eyes,  her  long  lashes  almost  sweeping  the 
rondure  of  her  cheek,  she  looked  a  Ma 
donna.  The  broad,  low  forehead;  the 
finely  chiselled  nose,  not  too  small  for 
strength  of  purpose ;  the  full,  firm  chin  — 
all  added  to  this  sweet  dignity,  which  was 
of  a  kind  to  compel  a  lover's  worship. 
There  was  enough  breadth  to  the  gracious 
curve  below  the  ear  to  make  me  feel  that 
this  girl  would  be  a  strong  man's  mate. 
But  the  mouth,  a  bow  of  tenderness,  with 
a  wilful  dimple  at  either  delectable  corner 
always  lurking,  spoke  her  all  woman,  too 
laughing  and  loving  to  spend  her  days  in 
sainthood.  Her  hair  —  very  thick  and  of  a 
purply-bronze,  near  to  black — lay  in  careless 
fullness  over  her  little  ears.  On  her  head, 
310 


CHARLESG.D.  ROBERTS 

though  in  all  else  she  affected  the  dress  of 
Grand  Pre*  maids,  she  wore,  not  the  Acadian 
linen  cap,  but  a  fine  shawl  of  black  Spanish 
lace,  which  became  her  mightily.  Her 
bodice  was  of  linen  homespun,  coarse,  but 
bleached  to  a  creamy  whiteness;  and  her 
skirt,  of  the  same  simple  stuff,  was  short 
after  the  Acadian  fashion,  so  that  I  could 
see  her  slim  ankles,  and  feet  of  that  exceed 
ing  smallness  and  daintiness  which  may 
somehow  tread  heavily  upon  a  man's 
heart." 

And  there  is  a  strong  resemblance  to 
Thomas  Hardy  in  at  least  one  of  the  para 
graphs  narrating  Paul  Grande's  race  with 
death  toward  the  Anderson  farm  —  the 
paragraph  dealing  with  the  idle  things  that 
then  incongruously  concerned  the  hero  : 

"  Things  idle  as  these :  I  see  a  dew-wet 
fir-top  catch  the  moonlight  for  an  instant 
and  flash  to  whiteness,  an  up-thrust  lance 

311 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

of  silver ;  I  see  the  shadow  of  a  dead,  gnarled 
branch  cast  upon  a  mossy  open  in  startling 
semblance  to  a  crucifix  —  so  clear,  I  cannot 
but  stoop  and  touch  it  reverently  as  I  pass ; 
I  see,  at  the  edge  of  a  grassy  glade,  a  com 
pany  of  tall  buttercups,  their  stems  invisible, 
their  petals  seeming  to  float  toward  me,  a 
squadron  of  small,  light  wings ;  I  hear  the 
smooth  swish  of  branches  thrust  apart ;  I 
hear  the  protesting,  unresonant  creak  of  the 
green  underbrush  as  we  tread  it  down,  and 
the  sharp  crackle  of  dry  twigs  as  we  thread 
the  aisles  of  older  forest ;  I  hear,  from  the 
face  of  a  moonlit  bluff  upon  our  left,  the 
long,  mournful  Wh6o-hu-Jiu  —  H6o-oo  of  the 
brown  owl.  I  smell  the  savour  of  juniper, 
of  bruised  snakeroot,  and  of  old,  slow-rotting 
wood;  with  once  a  fairy  breath  of  unseen 
linncea  ;  and  once  at  the  fringed  brink  of  a 
rivulet,  the  pungent  fragrance  of  wild  mint. 
I  feel  the  frequent  wet  slappings  of  branches 
312 


CHAELESG.D.  ROBERTS 

on  my  face ;  I  feel  the  strong  prickles  of  the 
fir,  the  cool,  flat  frondage  of  the  spruce  and 
hemlock,  the  unresisting,  feathery  spines  of 
the  young  hackmatack  trees ;  I  feel,  once,  a 
gluey  web  upon  my  face,  and  the  abhor 
rence  with  which  I  dash  off  the  fat  spider 
that  clings  to  my  chin;  I  feel  the  noisome 
slump  of  my  foot  as  I  tread  upon  a  humped 
and  swollen  gathering  of  toad-stools." 

More  than  one  judicious  critic  has  re 
marked  that  few  men  of  his  years  have 
achieved  —  and  deservedly  !  —  the  literary 
renown  which  Professor  Roberts's  published 
works  warrant.  These  works  are  as  fol 
lows:  "  Orion  and  Other  Poems  "  (1880), 
"In  Divers  Tones"  (1887),  "The  Can 
adians  of  Old"  (a  translation  from  the 
French  of  de  Gaspe*,  1889),  Appleton's 
"Canadian  Guide  Book"  (1890),  "Ave, 
An  Ode  for  the  Shelley  Centenary"  (1892), 
"Songs  of  the  Common  Day"  (1893), 

313 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

"  The  Raid  of  Beaus^jour  "  (1894),  "Reub 
Dare's  Shad  Boat"  (1895),  "  Around  the 
Camp  Fire"  (1896),  "Earth's  Enigmas" 
(1896),  "A  History  of  Canada"  (1897), 
"  The  Forge  in  the  Forest  "  (1897),  "  The 
Book  of  the  Native  "  (1897),  "  New  York 
Nocturnes"  (1898),  "A  Sister  to  Evan- 
geline"  (1898),  "By  the  Marshes  of  Mi- 
nas"  (1900),  "The  Heart  of  the  Ancient 
Wood"  (1900). 

However,  notwithstanding  this  long  and 
excellent  literary  record,  we  are  assured  that 
Roberts  "  has  a  keen  fondness  for  athletics. 
He  is  an  enthusiastic  football  and  tennis 
player,  canoeist  and  fisherman,  and  is 
equally  as  skilled  in  these  as  he  is  in  the 
pursuits  of  literature." 

Another  novel  from  his  pen,  "Barbara 

Ladd,"  appears  this  fall.     "  I  consider  it," 

he  writes,  "  a  sort  of  cross  between  *  The 

Heart  of  the  Ancient  Wood '  and  a  histori- 

314 


CHARLES  G.D.  ROBERTS 

cal-psychological  romance."  As  for  the 
future,  he  says  :  "  Next  will  probably  ap 
pear  a  collection  of  poems,  and  a  collection 
of  animal  stories.  Then  another  romance, 
planned  but  not  yet  named;  and  then,  if 
the  Fates  are  very  good  to  me,  I'll  take 
time  for  a  long  lyrical  drama  on  which  I 
have  been  engaged  off  and  on  for  some 
years." 


315 


Photo  by  Stra 


WINSTON    CHURCHILL. 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 


LATE  in  the  year  1900  it  suddenly 
became  plain  to  some  of  the  mysti 
fied  inhabitants  of  the  literary  world 
that  there  were  two  Winston  Churchills. 

It  is  indeed  remarkable  how  long  the 
error  lived  which  confounded  Winston  L.  S. 
Churchill,  war  correspondent  and  politician, 
and  eldest  son  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill, 
with  plain  Winston  Churchill,  the  author  of 
"  Richard  Carvel." 

The  error  cropped  out  soon  after  the 
beginning  of  the  South  African  war,  when 
the  Englishman,  at  a  place  called  Estcourt, 
took  gallant  part  in  the  defence  of  an  ar 
mored  train  bound  to  the  relief  of  Lady- 
smith.  It  was  the  result  of  one  of  the 
sentences  in  the  report  of  the  action: 

31T 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

"  Winston  Churchill's  brilliant  behavior  is 
compared  with  the  gallant  action  in  the 
Tirah  campaign,  which  won  the  Victoria 
cross  for  Lord  Fincastle,  who  was  also  act 
ing  as  a  newspaper  correspondent." 

Immediately  some  persons,  who  should 
have  known  better,  jumped  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  this  Winston  Churchill  was  the 
author  of  a  book  then  extremely  popular 
in  this  country.  It  is  a  notable  commentary 
on  the  persistency  of  false  ideas  that  the  two 
Churchills  were  not,  in  certain  quarters, 
positively  distinguished  from  each  other 
until  they  met  in  Boston  the  middle  of  last 
December.  It  was  an  interesting  meeting, 
as  we  gather  from  the  notes  of  a  witness. 

"The  young,  light-haired  Englishman 
was  in  bed,  in  his  room  at  the  Touraine, 
shortly  after  noon,  when  Major  J.  B.  Pond 
arrived  with  a  heavily  built  six-footer, 
smooth-shaven,  dark-complexioned,  a  pair 
318 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

of  merry  black  eyes,  and  a  rather  thick 
body  encased  in  a  raglan  of  dark  gray. 

"  *  Mr.  Churchill,  Mr.  Churchill,'  said  the 
Major.  The  man  on  the  bed  turned  over 
on  his  side  and  held  out  his  hand. 

"  '  I'm  sorry  to  find  that  you  are  ill,'  said 
the  Churchill  in  the  raglan,  as  he  caught 
the  outstretched  hand. 

" « Nothing  serious,  I  guess,'  said  the 
other ;  '  been  travelling,  you  know.  But,  I 
say,  how  came  you  by  that  name  ?  ' 

"  The  author  of  l  Richard  Carvel'  smiled. 

"  'The  first  trace  of  it  I  can  find  in  the 
family,'  he  said,  'is  about  1851.  It  seems 
that  there  have  been  Winston  Churchills 
over  here  for  a  good  many  years.' 

"Then  there  was  an  exchange  of  bouquets. 
Winston  Churchill  said  that  he  had  always 
been  looking  forward  with  pleasure  to  a 
meeting  with  his  namesake,  and  the  other 
Churchill  said  something  in  the  same  strain. 

319 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

"  *  I  was  interested  when  I  read  your 
first  book,'  said  the  Englishman.  '  Did  n't 
think  a  great  deal  of  that  book;  but  the 
other  one,  "  Richard  Carvel,"  I  was  willing 
to  become  responsible  for  that.' 

"  Then  it  developed  that  each  had  been 
responsible  for  the  other  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent.  For  this  reason  it  was  inevitable 
that  they  should  meet." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  mail  for  the  English 
man,  simply  directed  "Winston  Churchill, 
Boston,  Mass.,"  had  been  sent  to  his  name 
sake's  residence  on  Beacon  Street.  Later 
it  was  told  that  the  American  met  the  same 
embarrassment  in  London.  "  When  I  was 
staying  at  Brown's  Hotel,"  he  said  to  the 
Parliamentarian,  "  I  found  it  almost  impos 
sible  to  get  my  mail.  They  compelled  me 
to  sign  for  it  personally." 

The  Englishman,  by  the  way,  is  the 
author  of  a  romance  in  regard  to  which  the 
320 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

London  critics  seem  to  hold  an  opinion 
similar  to  that  which  he  admittedly  holds 
in  regard  to  the  American's  first  novel  — 
"  The  Celebrity." 

Speaking  of  "  The  Celebrity"  reminds  us 
of  the  still  prevalent  notion  that  its  con 
temptible  hero  is  Mr.  Richard  Harding 
Davis.  In  fact  we  believe  that  the  author 
was  openly  charged  with  having  written  the 
satire  merely  to  pay  a  private  grudge. 
We  heard  an  echo  of  the  charge  as  late  as 
this  year.  Yet,  more  than  two  years  ago 
Mr.  Churchill,  in  a  public  letter,  took  pains 
specifically  to  deny  the  imputation.  "  The 
Celebrity  "he  said,  in  effect,  was  entirely 
an  imaginary  work.  No  one  at  all  resem 
bling  the  chief  character  had  ever  been  met 
by  him.  So  far  from  paying  grudges,  he 
had  no  grudge  to  pay.  Indeed,  the  young 
writer  grew  so  tender  on  the  subject  that 
the  Colonial  atmosphere  of  "  Richard  Car- 

321 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

vel"  was  attributed  to  his  desire  to  avoid 
contemporary  themes.  But  the  truth  is, 
he  completed  "  The  Celebrity"  while  tem 
porarily  short  of  historical  material  for  use 
in  the  history  of  Richard  and  his  Dorothy. 
Twice  he  thoroughly  revised  "  The  Celeb 
rity"  before  sending  it  to  the  publishers. 

And  who  is  this  Winston  Churchill  ?  He 
is  the  son  of  Spalding  Churchill  of  Maine 
and  Emma  Bell  Blaine  of  St.  Louis,  and  he 
was  born  in  the  Missouri  metropolis  on  Nov. 
10,  1871.  The  first  sixteen  years  of  his 
life  were  spent  in  his  birthplace ;  and  there, 
at  Smith  Academy,  he  prepared  for  college. 
The  college  proved  to  be  the  Naval  Acad 
emy  at  Annapolis. 

As  a  boy  he  was  inclined  to  be  uncom 
monly  studious,  but  at  the  Naval  Academy 
he  developed  a  strong  inclination  towards 
athletics.  It  was  largely  owing  to  his 
energy  and  his  enthusiasm  that  the  cadets 
322 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

revived  rowing.  Like  most  other  cadets, 
he  learned  to  fence  expertly;  and  you  will 
find  an  intimate  knowledge  of  this  accom 
plishment  in  his  treatment  of  one  of  the 
most  dramatic  scenes  in  "  Richard  Carvel." 
He  took  to  horseback  riding,  also  to  golf 
and  to  tennis,  in  short,  to  all  the  pastimes 
that  strengthen  the  body  and  enliven  the 
mind.  It  is  his  devotion  to  physical  exer 
cise  which  has  enabled  him  to  work  long 
and  hard  without  distress. 

He  felt,  before  his  graduation  from 
Annapolis,  that  his  place  was  at  the  writ 
ing  table,  not  on  the  deck  of  a  man-o'-war. 
Apropos  of  which  he  has  said :  "  When  a 
man  is  being  trained  for  a  definite  career,  it 
helps  him  to  make  up  his  mind  as  to  his 
tastes  and  abilities.  If  he  is  sure  he  does 
n't  want  to  do  that  particular  thing,  he 
must  know  pretty  definitely  what  he  does 
want  to  do.  When  he  throws  over  a  cer- 

323 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

tainty  for  a  chance  his  heart  must  be  firm 
ly  set  on  the  kind  of  work  involved  in  the 
chance.  For  this  reason  a  technical  school 
helps  some  men  to  find  their  vocation  better 
than  four  years  at  a  university,  where  the 
training  is  general." 

In  1894  he  became  editor  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  Journal.  The  following 
year  he  joined  the  staff  of  the  Cosmopolitan 
at  Irvington-on-the-Hudson.  While  work- 
for  the  magazine  he  took  as  wife  Miss  Mabel 
Harlakenden  Hall  of  St.  Louis,  whose  for 
tune  induced  him  to  give  up  magazine  work 
altogether  and  devote  himself  to  the  real 
ization  of  his  dreams. 

Now  if  Churchill  lacked  either  determi 
nation  or  genius  the  wealth  that  through 
marriage  he  became  a  sharer  in  would  have 
have  availed  him  little.  He  might  have 
attracted  some  attention  as  a  dilettante,  or 
he  might  have  done  the  things  that  a 
324 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

wealthy  person  alone  can  do — establish 
another  Anglo-Saxon  Review,  for  example, 
or  publish  small  thoughts  in  editions  de 
luxe.  He  would  have  succeeded  if  his  wife 
had  never  brought  him  a  copper.  It  would 
have  taken  him  longer  to  succeed,  that  is  all, 
Art  is  long,  and  life  is  short  only  to  the  poor 
fellow  who  must  ascend  the  ladder  round  by 
round.  But  not  all  the  money  in  the  world 
can  ease  the  labor  of  the  brain. 

Churchill's  ambition,  from  the  first 
moment  that  he  felt  the  literary  impulse, 
was  to  write  a  historical  novel.  Annapolis 
had  fired  his  imagination.  "  Seeing  those 
old  houses,"  he  once  said,  "  which  used  to  be 
the  scenes  of  the  gayest  and  happiest  social 
life  before  the  Revolution  —  they  look  as  if 
the  people  had  just  gone  out  of  them  —  and 
reading  the  history  of  the  town  as  it  used  to 
be,  interested  me  greatly  in  a  certain  aspect 
of  the  life  of  the  colonial  planters,  which 

325 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

had  not,  it  seemed  to  me,  been  fully  and 
truthfully  expressed  in  a  novel.  What  I 
wanted  to  do  in  'Richard  Carver  was  to 
give  a  picture  of  the  life  of  colonial  Mary 
land  and  Virginia,  with  special  reference  to 
Annapolis,  and  to  contrast  the  people  who 
made  it  with  the  corresponding  element  in 
England.  One  of  the  things  I  wanted  to 
bring  out  strongly  was  that,  although  the 
leading  men  in  business,  in  professional  life, 
and  in  politics,  in  both  Maryland  and  Lon 
don,  came  from  the  same  stock,  a  few  gen 
erations  back,  politically,  the  British  had 
sunk  into  a  state  of  gross  corruption  and 
degradation,  while  the  Americans  were 
men  of  the  highest  integrity  and  the  clean 
est  motives,  mindful  of  their  legal  and  moral 
debt  to  Great  Britain,  but  resolute  not  to 
endure  more  than  a  certain  amount  of 
injustice." 

And  how  do  you  suppose  Mr.  Churchill 
326 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

prepared  for  the  big  task  of  writing  a  his 
torical  novel?  He  has  answered  the  ques 
tion  himself : 

"  By  visiting  all  the  places  concerned  in 
the  story,  and  by  reading  biographies,  his 
tories,  memoirs,  letters,  old  newspapers — 
in  fact,  everything  which  could  give  me  an 
insight  into  the  life  of  those  days,  or  into 
the  character  of  the  people  like  John  Paul 
Jones  and  Charles  Fox,  whom  I  desired  to 
introduce.  Of  course  I  read  a  great  deal 
too  much ;  a  great  many  books  gave  me  no 
direct  help  and  added  nothing  to  what  I  had 
already  learned ;  but  I  have  no  doubt  that 
all  this  reading  counted  in  the  way  of  let 
ting  me  into  the  spirit  and  the  atmosphere 
and  the  ideas  and  the  business  methods  and 
the  modes  of  life  and  thought  of  those  days. 
Of  course,  I  took  voluminous  notes,  and  had 
no  end  of  trouble  to  keep  them  arranged  so 
that  I  could  use  them,  in  spite  of  the  effort 

327 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

I  made  to  keep  notes  on  costumes  in  one 
volume,  manners  and  customs  in  another, 
unusual  words  and  turns  of  expression 
in  another,  incidents  in  another,  character  in 
another,  history  in  another  and  so  on." 

"  Richard  Carvel"  was  begun  in  St.  Louis 
not  long  after  the  author's  marriage.  It 
was  written  over  again  for  the  fifth  time 
between  October,  1898,  and  April,  1899,  at 
a  little  town  on  the  Hudson,  an  hour's 
journey  from  New  York.  Yet  it  is  a  proof 
of  Churchill's  zeal  and  industry  that  in  those 
six  months  he  visited  the  metropolis  only 
five  times.  His  habit  is  to  work  from  early 
breakfast  until  one  in  the  afternoon,  and 
then,  after  luncheon,  for  a  few  hours  more, 
after  which  he  takes  some  physical  exer 
cise  ;  and  after  dinner  he  picks  up  the  thread 
of  the  story  again.  You  see,  his  literary 
methods  are  very  simple ;  they  mean  work 
early  and  late,  work  done  doggedly,  and  as 
328 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

scrupulously  as  if  the  keenest  critic  were 
looking  over  his  shoulder. 

The  furore  which  "  Richard  Carvel " 
excited  is  too  well  remembered,  we  think, 
to  particularize  on.  The  author  was  made 
a  lion  of  everywhere,  truly,  and  exhibited  in 
all  the  gilded  cages  of  the  East.  We  recall 
that  the  mere  announcement  of  his  purpose 
to  go  to  the  theatre  in  New  York  was  suf 
ficient  to  insure  a  big  audience.  Not  another 
one  of  our  American  authors  whose  fame  is 
of  recent  acquirement,  and  whose  inclina 
tion  is  to  keep  far  from  the  madding  crowd 
has  been  followed  about  by  so  many  hero- 
worshippers  as  the  author  of  "  Richard 
Carvel "  was  during  the  twelvemonth  fol 
lowing  the  publication  of  the  book. 

Was  the  attention  justly  merited?  Un 
doubtedly.  "  Richard  Carvel"  is  an  extraor 
dinarily  powerful  story.  Its  atmosphere  is 
vivid ;  its  characters  are  excellently  drawn ; 

329 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

its  plot  is  skillfully  laid ;  its  action  is  vig 
orous  and  delightfully  varied. 

"  Richard  Carvel "  was  the  first  of  a 
series  of  historical  novels  which  Churchill 
planned  just  after  leaving  Annapolis.  It 
has  been  followed  lately  by  the  second 
member  of  the  series,  "  The  Crisis,"  the 
writing  of  which  occupied  nearly  two  years. 
While  thus  engaged  the  author  declined  to 
be  interrupted.  Naturally,  after  bounding 
to  the  top  of  the  ladder,  anything  which  he 
might  have  offered  would  have  been  ac 
cepted  by  some  publishers.  "  You  have  no 
idea,"  he  once  remarked,  "  of  the  tempta 
tions  that  are  put  in  the  way  of  a  man 
whose  book  has  been  accorded  a  popular 
success."  The  temptations  he  brushed  aside; 
he  made  up  his  mind  to  pursue  a  straight 
road.  And  wisely,  for,  as  he  argues, 
"  When  a  man  makes  a  great  reputation  by 
a  single  book,  and  then  allows  succeeding 
330 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

books  to  go  from  his  hands  which  do  not 
represent  the  very  best  work  of  which  he  is 
capable,  the  public  finds  it  out  at  once.  No 
matter  if  there  is  good  work  in  these  hastily 
written  books,  people  ignore  them.  I  think 
it  is  the  worst  thing  a  man  can  do  for  his 
reputation  to  write  books  coo  fast.  Of 
course,  it  is  the  worst  possible  thing  he  can 
do  for  his  lasting  reputation,  which  is  the 
thing  really  worth  working  for,  but  what 
I  mean  is  that  it  is  the  worst  thing  he  can 
do  in  the  short  run  as  well  as  in  the  long 
run.  Why,  even  speaking  commercially, 
which  is  the  lowest  and  the  least  and  the 
last  way  in  which  one  can  look  at  these 
things,  it  is  a  fatal  mistake.  And  I  think 
a  novelist  makes  a  great  mistake  if  he  con 
fines  himself  to  one  period  or  writes  several 
books  on  one  epoch,  though  it  is  more  or 
less  the  practice  to-day.  I  think  we  ought 
to  go  in  more  for  versatility." 

333 


LITTLE  PILGRIMAGES 

Mr.  Churchill  is  seen  in  New  York  and 
Boston  in  the  winter ;  in  the  summer  he  is 
to  be  found  only  by  traveling  'way  down 
East.  In  Boston,  particularly,  the  Chur- 
chills  have  become  very  well  known.  There 
Mr.  Churchill  puts  up  at  the  most  aristo 
cratic  clubs,  and  Mrs.  Churchill  graces  the 
most  fashionable  receptions. 


332 


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